treatment for Map is....??

If IBD is caused by MAP what's the treatment? Antibiotics?

What does it mean regarding treatment with biologics? or for those who don't respond to biologics?

i have Crohns/colitis. Not sure I'm jumping ahead rather than simply asking a question.

Vitamin C has shown protective effects against MAP though it cannot stave off such an infectious/etc. disease by itself. Just my two cents :).

Watch the video....

http://thecrohnsinfection.org./

@pb - thanks that one was really interesting. Scary actually in regards to infants.

@UB - I was thinking about it - if you're interested in MAP or the possibility that maybe there is perhaps an infection you should just literally pick up the phone and call Dr. Zhang at PZM Diagnostics www.http://www.crohnsmanagement.com. Quite literally just pick up the phone and call and talk to him. He is very easy to speak with and the long distance change is minimal, or use Skype or something.

I'm actually thinking not because of MAP, but I know the background of your troubles and I think he may be interested in general if you explain about the IVIG Therapy responses and the recurring perennial abscess. I honesty think he might help, and be capable of helping you figure some things out where some of the doctors up here might not. The website is a bit cheesy, but overlook that.

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As for what I take:

Morning:
2 gels caps of Thyme/Oregano Oil - OregaSupreme by Health First.
1 home made Cinnamon Oil (Cinnamon Cassia) cap with 4 drops - This is rough on the stomach though so some might not want to try it.
1 Vitamin C (1,000 mg)

Evening:
2 gels caps of Thyme/Oregano Oil
1 home made Cinnamon Oil (Cinnamon Cassia) cap with 4 drops - This is rough on the stomach though.
Vitamin A (10,000 i.u) gel cap
Imuran (150 mg)

This took me from probably 30+ times a day, blood, mucus and major urgency to pretty much normal with mild IBS like symptoms very quickly. I have stayed on this for two full years now this October.

As to why it worked... anybodies guess. But it did for me.

I also fine tuned my diet once I was able to get back to solid stool, and this had even more beneficial results.

It only works for me along with diet. I can induce mucus simply by eating certain specific foods now. Take them away and in 24 hours I go back to normal. So whatever is underlying the issue remains, but it gave me my life back to be perfectly honest.

EDIT: I should say that each of these are shown to be highly effective at directly killing MAP and TB etc. Maybe it's coincidental. Or maybe it deals with environmental exposure (food ingested) but does nothing for intracellular infection.... lot's of questions. They were however able to culture MAP from my blood which is interesting.

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 9/6/2015 12:11:54 PM (GMT-6)

I stumbled across this in another thread:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/pura-vida/201311/is-there-cure-crohns-disease

It's the story of a psychologist that believed she contracted Ulcerative Colitis that was later diagnosed as Crohn's as a result of MAP after handling a sick farm animal. She underwent an antibiotic regimen to cure MAP and has been symptom-free ever since. It's an interesting read and it has links to a clinical trial being conducted by an Israeli pharmaceutical company that bought the patent for the human treatment of MAP. I believe they are recruiting Crohn's patients for a study in the US.

Me too Mark, I remember when I was basically a new member here at HW and I posted about MAP and pretty much everyone at that time on the board discounted it as nothing and that it was just a coincidence that it was strikingly similar to Crohn's disease so of course I never bothered investigating the issue anymore and then recently here and at the CD forum (as you know, and I just responded to your reply to me over there) it's come back up again and it seems they now have more info in regards to the whole MAP theory which is great but at the same time, the length of years it's been with regards to MAP and it's association to IBD (and as you mentioned IBS) sorta has my head spinning with my blood boiling with some of the info that's now coming to light....however, if I can be treated successfully with AMAT that xy123 mentioned, if I can find out from my GI if that's possible for me, and be normal again with my gut then I'd be happy enough with that cuz this has been hell for the last 25 yrs every single day.

Check out the video below that CM posted a month ago.

This video more or less shows there is little or no evidence that IBD is an autoimmune disease. It is an immune deficiency disease, a deficiency against one particular type of bacteria. The signs point that it may be a mycobacteria, the same type of bacteria that causes tuberculosis and leprosy.

Antibiotics jump-started me from my last flare. In this video Professor Behr is saying that we do not now have the means to completely identify, isolate, and target the MAP bacteria that may be causing IBD. That is why general antibiotics only help 16 percent of IBDers. Hopefully in the near future newer, designer antibiotics will be developed.

It may or may not matter but he makes the point up front that his research is funded by the government, not Big Pharma. Anyway it looks like he might be on the right track for finally resolving this disease.

/www.youtube.com/watch?v=7x3lq8QEg5g&feature=youtu.be

Yes, you're right. Long ago it was suggested to not be an autoimmune disease. Back in 2009 and far prior many of the same researchers including Dr. Behr gave a very long presentation along the same lines discussing what they were finding in both humans and cattle with their research.

I think one of the most common statements/arguments people give against MAP having anything to do with Crohn's is that MAP can sometimes be found in perfectly normal healthy people without systems or IBD. Therefore they say it is just an 'innocent bystander' and has nothing to do with Crohn's. You read these statements in many human MAP publications.

The fact is, that in Jone's Disease, something like 90% - 98% of infected cattle do not show any symptoms whatsoever. They are asymptomatic. They simply carry the bacteria and some do not even shed it. Only a few small percent of cattle actually develop intestinal symptoms.

Does this mean that MAP is not the cause of Jone's disease if it can be found in perfectly healthy animals? Cause this is the same argument really.

This is what they (this group or both veterinarians and pathologists) have been working to figure out since 2009 and prior - why do only a few percent develop disease? Same thing applies to TB etc etc.

What it boils down to is that in cow's it's ok to isolate MAP put it in another cow and see what happens and if/how disease eventually develops and in what certain percentage. In humans this is completely illegal. You cannot intentionally give MAP to a kid and see what happens a few years down the road.

So all this time has passed simply trying to develop a disease model around this problem. The suggestion is to develop and use cellular models to try show this. That is what the video is really about. How to prove/study the link between MAP infection and development of disease using cellular models without actually purposefully infecting a human and going to jail.

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 9/7/2015 7:23:08 AM (GMT-6)

Exactly.

Until you either can infect a bunch of healthy, normal humans with MAP and see if some develop Crohn's disease, or show that MAP can be reliably detected in people with Crohn's and no longer reliably detected after being treated for MAP in either of the two cases, then everyone is kinda screwed. Nothing is going to go anywhere other than gaining a much deeper understanding of the immune system processes in IBD.

So this is what all the work is really around. How to accomplish one of these two things either using isolated human cells or newly developed tests. Until one of these takes place, then it's just an on-going argument.

Thankfully, it looks like some of these answers will take place very soon, like in a matter of a few months. Regardless of either good or bad results, nothing but positive information comes from them.

Crohn's disease is actually far more severe that Johnes in symptoms. Much more aggressive and damaging to the intestines. There's an old lecture on this from someone (a pathologist) invited to a conference to argue against MAP to bring balance to the lectures and learn what is needed to prove. I'd have to dig it out but it was quite interesting.

I think because the healthy controls would have to just happen to have the same genetic predisposition issue in order to develop disease - or at least this is what they are trying to show or understand. Again if this is even the case at all. So it is perhaps possible, but they would have to follow them for many, many years - and a lot of them. Same with cows.

As for the genetics, yes - I believe they do. In cows their corresponding NOD2/CARD15 gene polymorphisms predisposes them to worse and rapid disease. Verify this though by searching it. There are also one or two new studies comparing bovine macrophage gene expression to crohn's macrophage gene expression and response to MAP as well. I think this is why they say the two disciplines need to work together Veterinary and Human. If I look around I have these bookmarked if anyone is interested.

There is a 2014 paper on a new probiotic Detzia www.omicsonline.org/a-potential-curative-modality-for-crohns-disease-modeled-after-prophylaxis-of-bovine-johnes-disease-2161-1068.1000117.pdf that looks into and asks some of your same questions about normal healthy people and normal healthy cows I think. Go to the Discussion part where it states:

"For disease to be manifested, infection with MAP and intestinal inflammation are required" - where he is talking about natural infection of cows. This asks some similar questions about people.

As an aside - word is this same probiotic originally developed for cows is having remarkable results in humans by Professor Barody in a small trial. I think irishgal will know about this. Same with xy123 on here as they posted this.

If you really get into it - Inflammation is required because without it they exist in a different form (coccus cell wall deficient forms). Inflammation coaxes both MAP and TB out of this state into active and fast reproducing bacilli types. Inflammation provides them with required nutrients (oxygen), without it, they switch to nitrate respiration and shed their cell was - these are known as persisters for both MAP and TB.

Irish gal tests positive for persister form MAP - so do I by blood culture, but from different pathologists.

The whole thing is a just a giant mess for these people to figure or understand out really. So we just wait for it to be proved or disproved. Sucks @ss.

And then there's the whole antibiotic controversy, haha. Are they killing MAP or simply reducing inflammation?

Post Edited (Canada Mark) : 9/7/2015 1:06:12 PM (GMT-6)

Canada Mark said...
I think because the healthy controls would have to just happen to have the same genetic predisposition issue in order to develop disease - or at least this is what they are trying to show or understand. Again if this is even the case at all. So it is perhaps possible, but they would have to follow them for many, many years - and a lot of them. Same with cows.

The vast majority of people get Crohn's in their teens or 20s, so they could have a cut-off age of 30. (And pick the controls from families with a Crohn's history, maybe.) Also, I don't remember numbers offhand, but I seem to recall a similar % of people with IBS to people with Crohn's also had MAP? Monitoring the development of IBS in healthy controls gets rid of the need to worry about genes at least.

"For disease to be manifested, infection with MAP and intestinal inflammation are required" - so where did the intestinal inflammation come from? Maybe for some people it might be gastroenteritis, or something like that, but for me that wouldn't apply.

I dunno. It's late and I'm probably just talking bollocks at the moment, tbh. It'd be nice if something came of the probiotic, but I don't trust "remarkable" results from tiny studies.

Does kinda make sense ncot.

And not sure about the inflammation. I was wondering the same with myself. Just so many questions with no answers at the moment.