Bart origins

Since getting sick, I have often thought my Bart was with me since childhood. I had many cats and subsequent scratches and bites.
Rarely got sick throughout my life...except I did have diarrhea often from about 5 years old until I was in my 40's when it mysteriously stopped. It would happen after I ate a meal....

I don't know what happened in 2013 - when I became very sick. I was in a stressful job....maybe that flared things...and/or I got a tick bite - I had been running for a few years on a trail in the bushes.


I did test positive for lyme....in 2014....and then positive for bartonella - I think that was in 2016. (don't have my test results at my side right now)

I also wondered if one or other of Lyme or Bart had been in me since a child. I strongly suspect bart now - and have tested positive for Lyme.
we lived in a rural setting amongst farmland and moorland when I was a child and we always had cats. These were not house cats but roamed and hunted in the wild. Rabbits birds rodents etc. I will have been bitten and scratched many times - once by a feral kitten on a friend's farm. Although I was generally v fit and well I did have occasional odd illnesses.

on the other hand, we were never in the house and explored the wild places from age around 4 upwards so plenty of exposure to tick habitat and very much doubt we would have noticed a tick bite back then.

I even remember once thinking it was fun to be buried up to our necks in a huge pile of grass cuttings from the large wild garden ( which would have been perfect tick habitat before being cut - and presumably the ticks could have been hoovered up with the cuttings ) we all got a rash after that - but not a bullseye one.

although that particular lab found no Bartonella - in ticks i have read many other papers reporting relatively high incidence in ticks - sometimes higher than borrelia.

also - it will depend on the techniques used as many labs will only test for Bartonella Hensle - whereas there are at least 30 species of bart known and most of those have been found in humans - so it may be much more prevalent than the tests suggest.

my guess is it could be any or all of these mechanisms - some people even think Bart is the primary immunosuppressing infection that then lets borrelia and others get a foothold.

There does seem to be evidence that Bart affects the proper function of the cells that make many of the immune cells in the bone marrow and also that it suppresses apoptosis - one of the main mechanisms the body uses to get rid of infected cells. certainly many LLMDs state they find the hardest to treat patients have Bart as well as Lyme( borrelia) eg Dr Horowitz