@halcyon I was confused by the fact that it said "colon" as well, but I'm thinking that might be a mistake as these were biopsies from an endoscopy where they only looked at the esophagus and stomach.
If the gastroenterologist stuck the endoscope down your throat (as opposed to up your rectum), it cannot be a colon sample. Perhaps the gastroenterologist made a mistake, and put down "colon" by accident.
My understanding is that Dr Chia's lab requests gastroenterologists take a sample of the inflamed areas of the
antrum of the stomach (this is what it says on the
request form for Dr Chia's VP1 immunoperoxidase stain).
Also, he wants me to go on Equilibrant. Has that ever gotten anyone to a permanent remission?
It has indeed, especially males; although Dr Chia finds 50% of his patients do not respond to oxymatrine.
There is a transcript of one of Dr Chia's videos on oxymatrine treatment in
this post. You can see the image at the end of that post which shows the significant reduction in viral infection of the stomach tissues after oxymatrine treatment.
As far as the serology tests, I had a bunch done which were all negative, but he said those can't test for all of them.
The enteroviruses associated with ME/CFS are coxsackievirus B and echovirus. There are 6 types of CVB, and 32 types of EV.
The ARUP Lab blood tests that Dr Chia uses can detect all 6 CVB, but the
ARUP Lab test for echovirus only detects 5 out of the 32 EV types.
The stomach biopsy works by a different method, and detects enteroviruses by their VP1 protein, which is common to all these enteroviruses. So the stomach biopsy method has a wider scope, and is also more sensitive than the blood tests. The disadvantage with the stomach biopsy method is that it cannot tell you which type of enterovirus you have.
I wonder if it's really the cause of my symptoms or the product of something else?
It is not possible to know for sure. There are a number pathogens associated with ME/CFS, including enteroviruses, Epstein-Barr virus, HHV-6, cytomegalovirus, parvovirus B19, and some bacteria such as Chlamydia pneumoniae.
If you have ME/CFS symptoms, and your tests show that you have a chronic active infection with one or more of these pathogens, then that suggests the pathogen(s) may be causing your ME/CFS, and so you may then want to treat that infection with antivirals, antibiotics or immunomodulators.
If you had herpes infections such as Epstein-Barr virus or HHV-6, then the antiviral Valcyte might be considered, and studies show Valcyte can be effective. In the case of enterovirus, there are very few antiviral treatments, and oxymatrine is one of the only effective options.
There are also many other general treatments that can help your ME/CFS. Some of these are listed here:
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome — A Roadmap For Testing And Treatment