Minocycline - have you taken it?

I took it for about a month back in April. LymeMD has a whole blog post about it you should check it out.

I hope it's OK to copy and paste stuff- this is the bit about minocycline that I'm talking about.


about MINOCYCLINE

"More about neuroinflammation. Inflammation is a catch all term. Lyme is a disease of inflammation which translates into some sort of activity of the immune system. Inflammation is not a bad thing in and of itself. Inflammation is needed to fight off infection and for normal “housekeeping” functions of the immune system. It is when inflammation is out of control, like a runaway train that we get into trouble. As a general rule, inflammation can be chronic or acute. Chronic is never good.

The brain is not quite the immune privileged area I have referenced in the past. Glial cells in the brain comprise the resident immune system and they are quite active. Drugs that reduce neuroinflammation and suppress glial cells should be good, right. Not necessarily. Minocycline is touted as having anti-inflammatory effects in the brain. It is an active glial cell inhibitor. Minocycline was studied in patients with ALS. Surprise: patients got worse, significantly so. Glial cell activation is a normal, necessary function. In this case, perhaps changing only one side of the equation caused harm, not good. Care should likely be taken when minocycline is prescribed for long periods of time.

Doxycycline may be different. It may reduce brain inflammation also by a reduction of MMP-3 reducing apoptotic effects. (Cell death) and also have an effect on glial cell activation. As with my experience, the effects of two drugs can be quite different. Although minocycline crosses the BBB better than doxycycycline, I have always found that doxy is the more effective drug. Molecular mechanisms are being worked at by scientist as we speak (and also over my head). As clinicians we need to be mindful or potential distinctions amongst drugs of the same class.

Treatment of excitotoxicity on the other hand appears to always be a good thing, with drugs such as Lamactal and Namenda. Rocephin treats excitotocity so it should not make neuroinflammatory disease worse."

I was taking cefdinir, mino and flagyl. And... diflucan. I just found out diflucan sets of my mcad. At the time we didn't know what it was so I stopped everything.

I felt really really bad on that combo. But it was because of the diflucan. So I'd guess it would've been fine had I continued longer?

It was brief. Soooo..... ya. Weird. I can't say it helped. I can't say it wouldn't have either though. Too brief to tell.

I've been wanting to go on Mino for months now - keep hearing about it being so good for Lyme. Now I'm about to take it and I'm a bit apprehensive. I guess these antibiotics all come with side effects and risks. I just have to remind myself that these are rare occurrences - and It's not likely that I will turn blue or muddy- brown colour.

I guess you wouldn't really be able to tell, taking all of that at once, and not taking it very long.

You're right, Girlie, all sorts of side effects.. with everything, all the pharmaceuticals out there. I've never heard of any turning you into a chocolate with smurf teeth though, man.

Yeah, right again. Most of that stuff, the more serious things anyway, hardly happens to people. My luck would be that I'd be one of the rarities though.

Shame, Marie. I see you did other abx, so I guess it was just something about the mino in particular.

Dunno. Thanks, guys!

I started Mino about two months ago. It was one of the few I haven't been on in the last year and a half and it brought our my neuro symptoms BIG TIME. I called my LLMD on it and he said this is very common. I'm taking 100 mg 3x a day to really hit things hard. He said I could reduce to 2 but I dunwanna. I wanna kill these suckers.

I'm not Blue yet, although, that could be a good thing. then at least people would stop telling me how great I look for a sick person lol.

I have zero digestive issues on this. I also take it on an empty stomach.

With the herx I had, I would have to say it's effective. i was hoping I wouldnt feel much after being on ABX for so long, but those lil buggers must still be in there in force for the die off I must have had when starting.

Good luck with it.

I was on Mino for the full year that I took pharma abx back in 2007, and I did NOT fare well with it. Just be careful. Watch your symptoms and your body's response to things - and keep posting. We can help you watch for things.

It made all of my cognitive issues a LOT worse in a relatively short amount of time. I would say that you would notice these things and would be more likely than I was to stop it before you got into any real issues with it now that you know so much about it.

Oh I forgot another side effect... It stained my teeth bluish grey! Yes they were stained pretty bad actually, the dental hygenist thought I drank lots of coffee!!! LOL. It only happened when i was taking 100 mg a day twice a day for like 6 or so months though. But a teeth cleaning removed the stains it made.

Sorry - I couldn't resist!!!

Mino made me throw up the first night I took it, then took the next day like a dummy and felt drunk all day and sick. Thought I would die by end of day, was even afraid to fall asleep. But this is the very first antibiotic my LD put me on. I guess since I had Lyme for 15 yrs he thought he would pull out the big guns.

Girlie,

I think the normal dose is 100 to 200mg a day for most things, but max is 400mg a day. I wouldn't ever want to do 400mg unless I was going to plan to be in bed for 24 hours. 300mg a day really puts me in a tailspin.