Anyone know any good papers on babesia?

[sianrecovery]

Hi Guys
I am seeing an NHS infectious disease doc in North Manchester day after tomorrow. I tested positive for babesia, Duncani and microtii, via Ingenx earlier in the year, and borrelia via ispot. I would like to persuade them to treat me for an appropriate length of time. Anyone know of any peer-reviewed papers that might support my case?

Thanks in advance for responses

Sian

 

[Dufresne]

Hi Guys
I am seeing an NHS infectious disease doc in North Manchester day after tomorrow. I tested positive for babesia, Duncani and microtii, via Ingenx earlier in the year, and borrelia via ispot. I would like to persuade them to treat me for an appropriate length of time. Anyone know of any peer-reviewed papers that might support my case?

Thanks in advance for responses

Sian

To my knowledge there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting the treatment of babesiosis past a couple weeks or so, which is highly unlikely to eradicate the infection. You either have to find an LLMD or go your own way.

I only started making headway with the infection on chloroquine or quinine combined with primaquine. On top of this I rotate nitazoxanide with cryptolepis and sida acuta. I've had considerable success over the last couple of months on these protocols and all the drugs are affordable, unlike Mepron. Best of all you won't need a script for any of these. The herbs, however, are quite pricey when taken in higher doses.

All the online accounts of those on chloroquine and primaquine I've read have been overwhelmingly positive. It's usually those with duncani, getting no relief from standard babesia protocols, that choose this route, and I've not read a single negative report. I strongly believe this is the best way to treat the bug.

Quinine and chloroquine have produced some inconvenient side effects for me. Quinine does something funny to the ears but it goes away when you discontinue the drug, at least it did for me. Both chloroquine and quinine have given me a good case of photosensitivity, which sucks being it's the middle of summer. Yet I'm not even remotely considering giving up treatment, as it has been so beneficial.

The most informative study I've read on the subject of babesia is the following:
http://cmr.asm.org/content/13/3/451.full

Best of luck, Sian.

 

[sianrecovery]

Thanks very much for your feedback - very interesting, will investigate. I can't get the link to open, but will persist. The ID doc wouldn't recognise the validity of the Ingenx tests, or the specialist's letter from the US. He was firm in his belief that Lyme was easily resolved with three weeks of doxy. He said neither he nor any member of his department had ever seen or treated babesiosis. They took more bloods, but he didn't know what testing modality would be used. So all in all - a waste of my time, and his. Same old, same old.

 

[sianrecovery]

Got that link to work - what a great resource - thank you!

 

[Lou]

To my knowledge there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting the treatment of babesiosis past a couple weeks or so, which is highly unlikely to eradicate the infection. You either have to find an LLMD or go your own way.

I only started making headway with the infection on chloroquine or quinine combined with primaquine. On top of this I rotate nitazoxanide with cryptolepis and sida acuta. I've had considerable success over the last couple of months on these protocols and all the drugs are affordable, unlike Mepron. Best of all you won't need a script for any of these. The herbs, however, are quite pricey when taken in higher doses.

All the online accounts of those on chloroquine and primaquine I've read have been overwhelmingly positive. It's usually those with duncani, getting no relief from standard babesia protocols, that choose this route, and I've not read a single negative report. I strongly believe this is the best way to treat the bug.

Quinine and chloroquine have produced some inconvenient side effects for me. Quinine does something funny to the ears but it goes away when you discontinue the drug, at least it did for me. Both chloroquine and quinine have given me a good case of photosensitivity, which sucks being it's the middle of summer. Yet I'm not even remotely considering giving up treatment, as it has been so beneficial.

The most informative study I've read on the subject of babesia is the following:
http://cmr.asm.org/content/13/3/451.full

Best of luck, Sian.

@Dufresne Do you mind giving source where these meds can be purchased without 'scripts'? Thanks.

 

[Dufresne]

@Dufresne Do you mind giving source where these meds can be purchased without 'scripts'? Thanks.

Quinine, chloroquine, nitazoxanide, and clindamycin can be ordered from AllDayChemist.

I ordered the primaquine from http://www.thepharmacyexpress.vu/. It took a while to arrive and I thought I'd been scammed but it worked out fine. They actually sent me a couple hundred extra pills to make up for the delay.

Quinine and clindamycin are effective together and I take them for a week or so now and then just to shake things up. Unfortunately ADC only has Cleocin (Pfizer) and it works out to about $12 per day. I'd love to find a cheaper source.

Chloroquine and primaquine are my staples and I think I might just stay on them full time and continue rotating the herbs with nitazoxanide on top of this. The C&P protocol is very potent and I tolerate it well so long as I mostly keep my face, neck, and arms out of direct sunlight. I take 15mg primaquine in the morning and before bed, as well as 1000mg of chloroquine in the morning. Although hydroxychloroquine stays in your system for weeks, there's a flash from taking two 500mg tablets of chloroquine at once that produces significant die off and I think I'm making better progress as a result.

I've so much to report with my success treating babesia but I'm going to hold off until I'm really on top of it. Don't want to jinx things.

 

[Lou]

Thanks @Dufresne for taking time to give information on these meds. There are so few meds I can tolerate, yet the battle with this infection has brought me to a place where little choice is left.

When you do report again it would be good to know if you've suffered any major side effects from any of these drugs.

And if you have you overcome night sweats completely? It would be good to know also if you think these meds are simply knocking back the symptoms or if they're ridding your body of babesia. I wish you continued success.

 

[Dufresne]

@Lou I don't usually get the sweats. Occasionally when I lie down I'll get some when the bug is dying, but this is such a minor inconvenience. The real problem for me lies in what the bug does to my terrain. I believe it's releasing a toxin that drives my immune system absolutely nuts, producing oxidative stress -no doubt a self preservation tactic. This is what the infectious disease specialists don't understand about how a pathogen can exist in a chronic, smouldering fashion and perpetuate disease. I can't express the extent to which this bug has altered my life. It took me a long time to figure this out beyond a reasonable doubt.

Wormwood and artemisinin only ever stunned the infection, but they did a better job of shutting down the pathology than anything else. I read an LLMD claim wormwood and its derivatives actually shut down the bug's toxin-producing capabilities, and this corresponds with my experience. Unfortunately they stopped having this effect quite some time ago. Whatever you do don't treat with these alone. Babesia develops resistance to them quickly, particularly the extract artemisinin.

I used to have huge sensitivity problems with meds. I couldn't take anything for about 4 years. This all change when I got out of a moldy house. You might want to try this. Talk about dark ages... suffering this disease, not knowing the cause, and not being able to take anything for it.

The only side effect I can report is the sun sensitivity with quinine and chloroquine. That's it.

As I've written, the combos that caused me to feel babs die-off were quinine/clindamycin and chloroquine/primaquine. Nitazoxanide and the herbs can accelerate the killing but are not enough to produce a herx on their own. I actually like a bit of a herx to reassure me I'm getting somewhere, but too much is no good.

My babesia die-off is a sort of dizziness. I've heard others describe it as feeling see-sick or trying to maintain balance walking in a canoe. I also wake up with numb extremities from circulatory problems with these meds. Although they're known produce vasodilation, I'm pretty sure my circulatory problem is actually due to the bug dying off: always worse when I start treatment, when I up the dose, or when I add something to an already successful protocol.

 

[Lou]

Thanks @Dufresne for all the help.

Yep, I think babesia must be the worst of Lyme co-infections, I would be happy to return to days of only having ME/cfs. Not to say ME/cfs is any cakewalk, it's just I was much older when this came along and had made major progress getting better with ME/cfs when a lowly tick rammed its way into my life.

 

[heapsreal]

I often wonder if my sinusitis is babesia as it improves with bactrim which is effective against it.

i get the head sweats often. Frontal headaches and post nasal drip which are said to be common in babesia.

I often wonder if sinusitis is a misdiagnosis common with babesia.

 

[Hanna]

Has someone tried Enula and Quina from Nutramedix which are supposed to work on Babs.
I have tried the ABX route with multiple RIAMET rounds, but the bugs have been coming back 5 months after treatment.

I didn't see some improvement with Artemisia Annua,but tried for the first time artemisimin 600 mg/day. In 24 hours, I had the best results on symptoms (heavy night sweats, coughs, racing thoughts like madness). I understand @Dufresne that one should rotate supps like this one. I took it 1 week (Buhner advises one week on/ oen week off, others 4days on 3 days off ). I am now off, and I am feeling terrible. I hav't received yet the cryptolepis and Sida acuta I have ordered (I live in the middle-east, that does't make the thing simpler).

I don't know yet how I am going to rotate supps : artemisimin/crypto/sida acuta/ maby enula and Quina too ?

What would be the best way of taking artemisimin to reduce possibility of resistance ?

One more question, when you say chloroquine, does plaquenil (hydroxochloroquine) do the same job ? I admit I have to dig deeper on the subject.

 

[Dufresne]

@Hanna
I've also heard Buhner say staying on sweet wormwood for longer periods of time should be relatively safe but I think he's flipflopped on this one. He also believes babesia is very unlikely to develop resistance to the whole herb. Artemisinin is what you'd have to worry about. I wouldn't use this one unless I knew for sure that I had successful therapies already in place. No doubt though, it's a great addition to any protocol.

I got nothing out of enula and I haven't tried Quina. I can tell you there's a study suggesting quinine is ineffective for babesia without clindamycin, and I assume Quina's primary agent is quinine. However there are a number of alkaloids in cinchona bark that are probably effective with babesia, such as quinidine. The herbs I like are crypto, sida acuta, and wormwood. It's worth trying them in different combinations with drugs, this is what Horowitz says. Though he points out the exception is with drugs that cause QT interval lengthening. He's also stated that the Cowden protocol does nothing for babesia. I don't know if that includes Quina and enula, but from the reports of babesiosis sufferers I've read these are not very effective.

I seemingly got nothing out of alchornea, bidens pilosa, and very little out of brucea javanica. The next herb on my list is changshan. http://www.scripps.edu/newsandviews/e_20130121/schimmel.html

It's my belief hydroxychloroquine does not do the same job. Of course it's the main metabolite of chloroquine and it persists in the body for months, but I don't get the impression it sufficiently continues the killing. I only notice what I think is die-off for about twelve hours after a 1000 mg chloroquine dose.

Babesia is stubborn. Even in the medical literature they never use the term 'eradicated'. However I've read accounts of former sufferers who've seemingly bested it and no longer have to treat. The one thing they all have in common is they treated for many months. I'd be very weary of treating for shorter periods, like following flare-ups. I can only imagine this will lead to some degree of resistance. Apparently after 5 months we will have replaced our red blood cells, so the theory that makes sense to me is to treat aggressively for at least that long. I intend to treat for a good year in one way or another, or until I feel it's eradicated. Then I'll do a fair bit of testing to back this up, and probably even take a sort of prophylactic herbs for another year provided everything is still well tolerated. I can't afford to mess around with this one.

 

[Hanna]

Thanks a lot @Dufresne for all the info !

1. I understand your warning about the artemisimin and think I will wait to get first an efficient Babs protocole on hands before resuming treatment with it. The point is I wanted to avoid taking ABX after a whole year of intensive use (for Lyme and other co-infection. Babs was just treated twice with Riamet indeed).

2. Maybe I will try first a six months crypto/sida acuta/wormwood trial and see if symptoms come back (like with the Riamet) and then decide about meds. I havn't read enough to know if I may take several herbs at the same time on top of the general anti-lyme protocole (Buhner style or Nutramedix), or need to rotate.
I feel confused.

3. Chang Shang seems an interesting stuff. Need less brain fog to dig deeper. Do you know some patients who have taken it with success ?

 

[sianrecovery]

stubborn and hard to kill. Especially while not killing the host....

 

[juniemarie]

I have been treating Babesia for almost 1 yr. Most of my symptoms, as far as I can tell are gone, but I'm not quite sure it means the Babs is gone.
When I added Crypto. mid winter all of a sudden after 2 doses by the end of the day it brought on severe Bart symptoms to the point where I could not walk.
I don't know if Babs is just hiding out and letting Bart take center stage or whats going on exactly.

 

[Hanna]

That's interesting @juniemarie !
Twice, I experimented something like you : treating babesia to see its symptoms disappear, and then experiment come back of Bartonella (day sweats, psy symptoms, respiration problems), as if babesia was indeed masking bartonella.

 

[Dufresne]

I remember reading Klinghardt say babesia kills bartonella.

I've also read, I think it was Burascano, that treating with the typical babesia meds first, makes bartonella meds less effective later. I looked for the quote but all I found was the following which is consistent with what I remember reading.

Some recommend treating Bart first because the meds for Babs can somehow render Bart treatments less effective, or something like that..

Don't think this applies though if one uses herbal protocols for Babs & Bart.

Sida acuta is apparently a good herb for both. According to Buhner it "really turns bartonella around." and it "protects blood cells."

if I had both I'd see how bartonella treatment went first, and then add in some babesia meds and herbs.

 

[juniemarie]

@Hanna my Babs. symptoms sound more like your Bart symptoms. My Babs symptoms are fever, sore throat, achy joints, stuffy ears, night sweats, swollen glands, severe fatigue, horrible respiratory problems, congestion, asthma
My main 2 Bart symptoms are totally messed up bottoms of my feet and brain fog
@Dufresne I have been on Sida for 10 mos, along with many other herbals.

 

[Hanna]

@juniemarie , I also relate the night sweats to babs, and Bart gives me heavy head day sweats, also I don't sweat at all normally. Babs gives me a light dry cough, but it seems that I get more chest pain and also spasms of the respiratory track with what I identify as been bart flares.
And sorry, I had forgotten, the come and go heel and sole pain especially when I get up, which comes with bart flares too.

@Dufresne , thanks for the quote. Bart treatment before Babs. That's a pity, my LLMD treated Babesia first. He insisted in saying that babesia treatment was the first line to go with, according to what he learnt from Dr Horowitz. Babesia should be treated first otherwise we couldn't reach nor borrelia nor other coinfection (he said).

 

[juniemarie]

My treatment targeted all 3 at the same time.

Don't know if anyone has been following a new treatment that seems to be having excellent results Its pretty new so its difficult to say what the results will be long term.

I am on a FB group for it so I can follow peoples progress

Its called LDI Low Dose Immunotherapy Google it with the name Dr Ty Vincent and the word Lyme and you will get info that can explain it much better than I ever could.

Its not geared towards killing lyme & co. but towards getting your immune system to recognize and not over react to lyme & co……..and lets face it I think we can all agree that trying to kill lyme & co. is pretty much a never ending battle with questionable success.

I really should start a thread about it.

One of the cool things about it is its really not very expensive after the initial consultation.