Solaris719 said...
Girlie said...
Solaris - have you thought about trying Rifabutin?
For me it’s been rough - but not so much lately...I’m hoping I’ve lessened the bart load and that’s why my herxes have finally calmed down.
Levaquin and Cipro seem to be the best but I would be too worried if I was on it. Not so much because of the tendon damage risk - as that can be repaired - but more concerned about the CNS/PNS damage.
I’ve ruled out any Rif drugs forever after the experiences I’ve had over the past 6 weeks. Looking back, I don’t know how I tolerated it for 7-8 weeks straight last summer. Just wish I could have gone another month or tried something else right after and I probably wouldn’t have relapsed. My LLMD had me just switch to Bicillin and i enjoyed 6 months of symptom free bliss after that.
When you say Levaquin/cipro being the best, do you mean for treating Bartonella, or the best drugs in their class?
My mom is prescribed Levaquin quite often as she has many autoimmune issues and she has no side effects whatsoever. They’re only 10 day courses though. I wonder how long they would prescribe it for someone on Bart?
I’m familiar with PnS damage like peripheral neuropathy etc, but what kind of CNS damage has been reported with their use?====================
I meant The fluoroquinolones are the most effective abx to treat Bartonella
I found this - hadn’t seen it before.
https://epmonthly.com/article/fda-puts-kibosh-fluoroquinolones/“ The latest “black box” warning focuses on an array of neurological problems associated with these antibiotics.“
“But given the seriousness of the latest Black Box on the fluoroquinolones, tendon rupture appears like a hiccup in comparison. More specifically, the newest Black Box on these antibiotics came out on May 16, 2016 and focused on an array of neurologic problems. Through post-marketing surveillance it was noted that a variety of psychiatric and neurologic problems were disproportionately happening in association with fluoroquinolone use. In fact, here’s an abstract from the Emergency Medical Abstracts database that specifically addresses the issue, and was published in 2011 – fully five years before the Black Box warning was issued. Some of the key points from the paper:
The incidence of psychiatric and neurologic side effects is estimated at 1-2%. That sounds very high, however how many patients taking these medications had trouble sleeping while on them or felt a little “up tight” and never considered the drugs to be the cause? And how many patients presented to their clinicians with a variety of neurologic or psychiatric symptoms while on the drugs that were dismissed as unrelated because no one has ever heard of an antibiotic causing such problems?
about
half the patients in the series had psychiatric effects and the other, neurologic symptoms.
The most common neurologic effects were seizures, confusion, headaches, dizziness tremors and myoclonus, while the most common psychiatric effects were mania, insomnia, psychosis anxiety, hallucinations paranoia, and delirium (suicide attempts have been reported at high doses).
Symptoms were noted from hours to weeks after taking the antibiotic and averaged 14 months in duration (as long as nine years has been reported).”Note: I added the bold to the last sentence.