Minocycline agains borrelia strains.

I've send and email to Eva Sapi and it's what she said about minocycline. What does it mean?

I am just writing report on tetracycline like minocyline and at least in the test tube it is not effective against Borrelia. here are some paper sfrom our lab and from John Hopkins University lab and a review. I hope you will feel better soon bests Eva

she is right. you only need to look at this table to realize it

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4373819/table/pone.0117207.t002/

control (water) leaves 87% alive, doxy (a tetracycline similar to mino) 72%. so doxy is 15% better than water

however notice if u combine doxy with rifampin, it gets to 60% (last column, 2nd cell).
notice triple combinations are much better than one or double. this is why you should NEVER treat lyme with just one antibiotic... 3 ore more are preferred...

we are using rocks to fight a war plane. this is the state of lyme disease treatment in 2018. terrible ...

remember folks this is in a test tube. in vivo (in the body) could be much different. this is why more research (aka funding) is desperately needed.

and if you can the best approach is to treat with at least 2 abx. Dr. J in DC uses Bactrim a lot because it is in fact 2 abx combined into one drug and he pairs that with another abx so you're effectively taking 3. Bactrim also hits all 3 B's and is a mild biofilm buster.

read eva sapi last paper on bee venom ....trojan horse better than 3 abx...

sierraDon said...
is there any other data/studies supporting doxy, mino, rifampin, rifabutin supporting their activity against persisters.

Just curious as i recently started minocin and rifabutin (and ceftin.) seem like they have good activity against both lyme and bartonella.

yes

/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5372990/

same author. the only guy doing combination drug tests is Zhang, because he is a TB researcher and he knows how persistent infections are handled: 3 or 4 drugs in parallel for 6m-1year at minimum...

Kitkate said...
mpost,

Can you tell me what your worst symptoms have been and the abx or herbal protocol that you have used that you found the most helpful? Also, how long have you used it.

Thank you

worst symptoms were brain fog and stomach pain. these are gone. i still have muskoskeletal pains and some eye pain occasionally. twitches, etc...

i have not noticed help from herbal protocols. i am sorry.

in terms of abx, most useful was minocycline, cipro, tinidazole but that was back in 2015. i was fine after that for several months, treated with herbs for 2 years and relapsed badly. now im on mino, rifampin , zithromax and artemisinin. i still have symptoms but the flares are milder than with no abx. im treating with this combo for 8 months, probably will take me at least 1 year if not more , to be symptom free...

my teeth are already stained from so much minocycline ... it does have that effect. but i don't care much, worth the price...

Kitkate said...
Thanks mpost!

I'm on mino for first time (always been doxy in the past) and I feel like it's hitting more. Interesting that 1st post referring to Sapi says it's not as effective.

sapi did not say specifically mino is not effective. she said in general all tetracyclines are not very effective. that includes: doxycycline , tetracycline, minocycline.

she says that because lyme has at least two forms: the spirochete, well researched and understood , very easily killed by many anyibiotics including tetracyclines...and the spherical persister form, almost not researched at all until 2015... this form is vert resistant to tetracyclines and the reason why we are not achieving cure.

this does not mean u should not take your mino, it only means u need to take more than just mino....

sierraDon said...

i have been treating since January, however just started mino/rifabutin (and ceftin) to target bartonella (and lyme).

rifabutin is from the same class of antibiotics as rifampin (rifamycins), but rifabutin is better than rifampin, although more expensive. it has MUCH longer half-life than rifampin, which means it stays in your blood for a lot longer. That means is has more time to kill more bacteria. So it's better option than rifampin for both borrelia and bartonella, combined with some other abx, ofc...

Dr H from NY is using rifabutin instead of rifampin for patients that do not respond well to initial treatment. it's mainly used when Bartonella is a coinfection, but as i stated earlier, i have doubts these rifamycins help patients because they hit bart, they may very well hit Borrelia persisters, as well as bart.

Bart is not a problem for healthy people. If tomorrow all your Borrellia bacteria will be gone...pooof... and u will be left with all the other coinfections, your immune system will bounce back up and clear bartonella right away. Bartonella becomes evil in patients that have compromised immune systems, by something else: HIV, cancer, borrelia, malnutrition (homeless), some rare immune disease, etc....

Post Edited (mpost) : 3/31/2018 11:38:47 AM (GMT-6)

Girlie said...

What I'm wondering: Why do most of the LLMD's prescribe Rifampin over Rifabutin? I don't think it would be the cost...as most of us are willing to pay a higher price (or have insurance coverage) to get well.

there are several reasons
- rifabutin is now used as first line of treatment in TB combos, it has replaced rifampin which is no longer effective. LLMDs may want to avoid issues with insurance companies becoming nervous about them using such a potent antibiotic like rifabutin, that saves lives for TB/leper patients, to treat a non lethal lyme disease that might have responded to rifampin...

- rifabutin is, as far as i understand, MUCH more expensive, it is not just a small difference in price. treating patients with years of antibiotics may make this kind of price prohibitive especially if insurance will not pay for it ...

- rifampin is quite widely available in most countries, not sure about rifabutin

there may be other reasons that maybe a LLMD can explain better than me. ask them next time when u visit them.

yeah, when reviewing options with my LLMD about rifabutin and rifampin, the decision was made for rifabutin as it has no interaction with other meds i am taking, where as rifampin did.

she said rifabutin was equal or more potent than rifampin.

i looked up the cost that my insurance paid for rifabutin, and yes it was around $975 for 30 days supply. so it is expensive.

I wonder how the long half-life impacts overall timeline.

sierraDon said...


i looked up the cost that my insurance paid for rifabutin, and yes it was around $975 for 30 days supply. so it is expensive.

I wonder how the long half-life impacts overall timeline.

Wow - that's crazy...even more than the Mepron. I haven't submitted my receipts for Mepron yet...but a local pharmacist told me my Blue Cross should cover it.

With the long half-life I think it can be awhile after discontinuing to know what your baseline is...especially if you're daily dosing...

Mepron is 2-3 days....so on my two weeks off I don't know if I'll be rid of it...haven't tried to do the math - based on the M/w/F dosing for two weeks (plus the two weeks in the previous cycle) But, I do know that this
is the worst I've felt since starting the protocol 2 months ago.

mpost - I get what you're saying - but not a good example: Tinidazole does come with a Black Box Warning.

BOXED WARNING
WARNING: POTENTIAL RISK FOR CARCINOGENICITY

Carcinogenicity has been seen in mice and rats treated chronically with metronidazole, another nitroimidazole agent ( 13.1). Although such data have not been reported for tinidazole, the two drugs are structurally related and have similar biologic effects. Its use should be reserved for the conditions described in INDICATIONS AND USAGE (1).

Thanks for your perspective mpost, much appreciated.

i assumed they were similar due to being the same class of drugs. wonderful how nice the FDA is with classifying warnings.