Garzie said...
navigating this whole lyme and co-infections self diagnosis topic is a very difficult process with many pitfalls
so i sympathise as we all struggle with this - but i'm not sure of your reasoning is robust here
i mean, you may well have babseia - but i don't think you can reasonably infer this tell from the experience you have described
i think i have mentioned this before - but the facts you are basing your argument on are not accurate
clindamycin is actually rather broad in its antimicrobial action - its mechanism is similar to that of macrolides - it interferes with bacterial cell protein synthesis - so is active where they are active
it is active for bartonella and lyme - there are papers on that - its just not typically used as a first line treatment for them
the reasons for this are more to do with its side effect profile - which are worse than many other alternative antibiotics - like doxy, clarithromycin etc - so its use tends to be for more specific conditions - which you will commonly find listed on the internet - so it tends to be reserved for the things that its thought to be particularly suited too - where the extra side effects are felt to be an acceptable price to pay.
this is not the same thing as clindamycin being specific for babesia -
in fact its rather weak in effectiveness for pyroplasms
yes, clindamycin was used in the past to treat malaria - but only in combination with other anti-malarials - mainly quinines - which were actually the main anti-malarial agent in that combo - and even then it wasn't very effective and had a poor side effect profile - so is no longer used for that either.
in general - confirmation bias is a very tricky problem in self diagnosis - it is a particularly insidious problem as the more we care about the outcome the more susceptible we are to suffering it - and we all care about our health - so its something that effects all of us. we have to guard against as best we can
ie - make sure we are fitting our theories to the facts ( not visa versa ) and spend equal time and effort weighing the facts that disagree with our working theory - as we do with the ones that agree with it.
otherwise the default is that we only see the things that line up with what we have already chosen to believe - and this can have us spend valuable time effort and money going down rabbit holes that are not likely to be productive.
in terms of a potentially useful therapeutic trial - atovaquone is thought to be much more specific drug for babesia -
a trial of a few weeks would be expected to produce strong herxhiemer reactions - but also followed by noticeable improvement - as per Dr L's recent ILADs preso
in someone who has multiple infections and is very sensitive to many medications this still may not be specific enough to be definitive - but a longer trial which also produced significant improvement after stopping would at least give another useful data point and increase your chances of getting a useful indication - vs say a strong reaction and stopping after a day or so - which could be caused by any number of factors
i genuinely hope this is of some help
all the best
I keep forgetting if we take other abx not for the actual infection itself, that it could stir up other infections. Must hv had way too much brain fog to think of that before lol. My main concern was air hunger. I know it's a typical babs symptom as I was told. I've had air hunger in the past before any diagnosis. What I'm asking was can bart cause air hunger?? My air hunger got 100x worse on treatment like I've never felt before. I was justnthinkig along the lines of babs. Anyhow I threw the clinda in there just because I know in the past it was used to treat babs and I've been test for other microbial infections that clinda would not be effective against. Anyhow clinda is weak against other infections so this was my theory with the clindamycin. I guess I didn't want tonbe one of these people who treat lyme and Bart for months or years with abx, only to find out I should have been treating babs all along ,know what I mean? I've heard of lots of ppl treating Lyme and Bart for years only to not not get better, no progress and to find out babs was the culprit all along . Thanks for the great feedback.