My polish blood smear results came back

that's an interesting one Blazer

4.8% parasitaemia with babesia should be absolutely black and white in terms of diagnosis -

this means that there will be one infected red blood cell in every 20 red blood cells - and that means each field of view in the microscope will have 10-20 babesia in it - when babesia is at this level its unmistakable - as there are so many examples - all presenting the same way - stained the same etc - it becomes clear that they are not artefacts

that is actually a very high count for chronic babesia - as in chronic human babesiosis the counts can be less than 1 infected cell in 1000 in the peripheral blood - making it very hard to spot.

ref mishapen red blood cell
for what its worth - my NHS blood tests came back with spherocytosis and other malformed red blood cells like yours , they were concerned about haemolytic anaemia and did a screen for 40+ genetic causes and found none - it later turned out i had bartonella all along and its known that bartonella causes all of these red blood cell malformation issues

i have since regularly seen them in my own blood smears

so that is consistent with the lab finding bartonella in your blood

bartonella can also be very hard to spot - but if they know what to look for its highly definitive -
basically - groups of pale vacuoles, often in rings around periphery visible inside red blood cells - typically occurring in groups of cells clumped together with a very faintly staining matrix

its a real shame they did not share the photos - as we could verify their findings very easily that way

i wonder if its worth asking them for photographs ?

loski01 said...
Are they approaching this smear differently than a U.S. lab running a smear with staining? Never heard of this Polish place.

they have images of Giemsa Stained smears of babesia on their website - so i assume thats what they are doing - same as many labs

the differentiating factor with testing with smears for tick born infections are
1, how well trained the technician is - most text books are simply wrong ( eg most are taught you cannot see bartonella via Giemsa stain so will not even look for it )
2, how long they are prepared to look at each slide - (the economics mean that most places will spend only 15mins max - as lab techs + overheads are expensive - vs the couple of hundred dollars/euros they can charge per test)
but tick born infections can be either
a, very low levels of parasitaemia -
or
b, very non-homogenous - eg bartonella can be undetectable in 9 slides only to be rampant on the 10th
so you may need to look at many fields or even many slides to find it

i frequently have to spend 1-2hrs per slide and maybe 10 slides in total to get a reliable picture

so its not so much that the labs are using all together different methods - more that some know what to look for and spend sufficient time looking - vs a mainstream lab that is not well trained in tick born disease presentations and spend 15mins max

Loski01- how does elevated Biliruban play into this?

(Some people have periodic elevations of that their whole life, it’s a genetic disorder, obviously related to liver.)

Garzie- Well, glad I asked I have not heard of those details before. I thought it was just a couple genes connected to it not 40, good thing you had those tested.

The one or two I have connected to it are so common that 23andme tested for it.

Several times in my early early 20s I had what appeared to be a light case of yellow jaundice.

Fast-forward too years later, and I find that could be connected to elevated Billy Rubin. (Like how my phone spells that for me lol? It’s entertaining. I’ll just leave it.) In the US, it’s usually in our Yearly physical comprehensive metabolic panel. Last summer, mine was normal.

Thanks

I have a pretty radical way of thinking, either its assisted suicide or getting better (Not necessarily cured)

So I Chose getting better haha.

It gets really dark but I wouldnt want to live Like this. Aslong as I can still Work on things I will Always do. If Theres nothing to Work on i can Go.

Greetings and thanks for chiming in.

Yeah Facebook groups are fine for smaller stuff Like this chronically ill living group i am in but i prefer Forums aswell.
Especially when you have Long scientific discussions Lol. But i guess thats too much for the average consumer Joe today.

Phoenix Rising is bleeding Out and slowly dying aswell and I dont Like that.

Do you mind sharing the name of the lab or the website? Thank you!

do you think its worth asking the grumpy guy for photos of your results Blazer?

my thoughts are that its normal for any lab to take photos of slides as a matter of course - as part of their internal process - eg in case they need to revisit result's

you could explain that 4.8% seems v high Babesia content - considering other tests have not detected it

they may feel motivated to demonstrate the veracity of their results. Most conscientious people would.

anyway the worst that can happen is they say "No"

Hmm. odd.

i have in the past - and still have half a idea when i am well enough - to set up such a blood smear type microscopy service in the UK as it seems hard to access this test (done with the proper care) and its a method that has a number of advantages over many of the other test methods out there - for instance serology, which is an indirect method ( measures the host - not the infection) and is known to have poor sensitivity for chronic infections.

my plan was always to provide images in the report - so people could see what is being referred to as Babesia and bartonella etc

T.Labs does this type of report

in this case a lack of anything but text in the report to makes it hard to assign a value or significance to their findings

it could be bang on the nail
or
it could be a random guy in a lab pointing to debris on a slide image - and saying "this is Babesia"

bit frustrating

Yep. The debris theory confuses me.

First Thing i will try buhner babesia Herbs and See If i react to IT either getting better or herxing from it.

I mean at this point

".....it could be a random guy in a lab pointing to debris on a slide image - and saying "this is Babesia"..... "

Without some standardized test method / known sample comparison, the above is always a possibility.

------------------------------------------------------------

The USA had Advance labs for Lyme, which they would try to grow Lyme culture/bacteria in your blood vs looking at a smear.

Problem with chronic Lyme is its no longer in your blood anyway since it prefers NOT to have oxygen. Its in the spinal fluid, nerves and "white" joint tissues.

BlazerGermany said...
Yep. The debris theory confuses me.

First Thing i will try buhner babesia Herbs and See If i react to IT either getting better or herxing from it.

I mean at this point

to try to explain a bit further -
people who are not well trained have a tendency to look at anything on a slide that absorbs stain and exclaim - "that's a pathogen"
but in reality there are lots of things in even healthy peoples blood that will absorb stain and show up as small dark dots or shapes in the microscope field of view - platelets, fragments of cellular breakdown, dirt of contamination on the slide, elements of activated platelets or white blood cells, results of poor slide preparation technique.
in sick individuals - as we saw in your dark field images - there can be dramatically more debris visible than usual.

in addition Giemsa stain itself is known to be problematic due to its propensity to produce artefacts that are remnants of the stain itself on the slide.

its also very difficult to tell if something is debris on top of a red blood cell or a microorganism inside it - as the microscope image is two-dimensional

so it is in fact a very difficult job differentiating real bacteria or babesia from all of these rather common artefacts in every slide - and having spent several years training myself in exactly this - and having some appreciation of how difficult it is - i am a little wary of some of the statements i see reported about it. especially when high % of parasitaemia is quoted - as that's unusual in itself.

the people with whom i have attempted discussion with over this difficulty in differentiation between artefacts and pathogens have tended to be v resistant to changing their minds - even when presented with the evidence.

its the thing we often see - true experts are wary of making absolute statements and cautious of drawing false conclusions - as they are more aware of all of the detailed ins and outs in their field that can influence a result.
so-called-experts are often the ones making obsolete statements, are less aware of the ins and outs and more prone to over diagnosing

i don't mean to do a guy down who i have never met or know anything about - its just there is the above general trend, a few things seem a bit unusual and we don't have any way of assessing what he has stated either way as no supporting evidence is provided.
so we are just left with it could be perfectly accurate or not worth the paper its written on or anywhere in between.

anyway - i am sorry it has not been more definitive - i am frustrated for you

options might be
1, babesia specific testing
i-Genex have a Babesia Genus specific FISH test - that should react to any Babesia species - and hence should be better than previous mainly serologic based tests which tens to be species specific - at 4.8% parasitaemia you should light that up like a Christmas tree!
-T-Labs have a Babesia Odecoilei specific FISH test that is expected to be about the most sensitive out there - and they publish reports with images so you can see what they see
if the polish test wasnt too expensive - perhaps it could still be considered to have value if it helped justify a more specific test for babesia - and that came back positive

2, therapeutic trails
the issue with the buhner type babesia herbs is that they are also active for many other things
cryptolepis is very broad in its range of action
Sida - also the same or broader
artemisinin - we have less info on - but i suspect it is also broad - for instance - i think it may be active for bartonella and there were trails showing its actually highly active for lyme persister cells - at least when used in combination with other abx

a therapeutic trial of something more specific for Babesia might be with say Atovaquone or one of the newer antimalarials like Tefenoquine

i feel your frustration

i hope its of some help

thanks for your insights on this garzie. what makes it even more concerning is that i found a facebook group that uses the polish lab for diagnosing babesia and almost every single test turns back positive. like he has a 8/10 positive quote I would say and that does sound very fishy.

I've seen results with as high as 17% and while that can be true for acute babesiosis I am not sure weither this is actually the case for chronic ones. I've seen literature of acute babesia of as high as 50% with hospitalization though.

So if this man messes around with his giemsa stain, wich I wouldn't usually think if he has a lot practice with doing this, he could create artifacts.

So either:
1. he produces artifacts on accident, wich doesnt sound likely.
2. i actually have 5% parasitemia and a moderate bartonellosis (keeping in mind his range goes from + to ++++)
3. the darkest theory: he just gives people what they want to hear.
I have always found that while chronic pathogens can be absolutely real and debilitating , I think we must admit there is a lot of fishy stuff floating around in the chronic lyme world. Mabye he just says oh whatever give this weird babesia cult what they wanna hear and they keep sending me money....

its hard.

refering atovaquone and herbs:
yeah i am aware that cryptolepis is said to be very broad, but i must admit that since my negative experience with LDN i am tired of medications. wich is one reason why i am starting my apheresis next week. i just dont wanna take any pills anymore. so imma might try a herbal route first for that reason.

You may know a herb that is not-so-broad when it comes to targeting babesia but not much else? that could be helpful, because apparantly almost all herbs tend to attack atleast 2-3 pathogens.

greetings