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New discovery: L-form bacteria survive in the blood for years

Cheesus

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This is really interesting. I have highly atypical CFS/ME and I have always had the belief that a novel bacterial infection could be the cause of my illness.

@alicec Is next generation sequencing likely to show a bacterial infection like this?
 
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Cheesus

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This is from his paper on the subject. Note that this paper is not peer reviewed or published and is only available to download as a word document from ResearchGate:

Live slides from participants with rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and prosthetic joint infection provide direct visual evidence that infectors are present in blood cells and thriving within plasma is clear.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Hunt/publications
 

alicec

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Note that this paper is not peer reviewed or published

Not only is it not peer reviewed, it presents no methods so reliability of results can't be scrutinised, while results are given as a perfunctory summary - again they can't really be scrutinised.

In short it is not a scientific paper with any credibility, nor does the author appear to have any scientific background that I could find.

To me it has all the hallmarks of a scam. I'd need to see a lot more evidence to be convinced that there is anything to it.

Is next generation sequencing likely to show a bacterial infection like this?

The limiting factor for NGS revealing a low level pathogen (whether it be an L-form or non-L-form bacterium, virus or fungus) is the presence of much greater quantities of host DNA which can mask rare sequences.

Various techniques have been devised to overcome this technical problem and the technique is being increasingly applied to both pathogen hunting and to diagnosis of infections which defy all other identification techniques.

Here is a review which summarises the state of things a couple of years ago. It concludes :-

The question is probably not if, but rather when, WG-NGS (whole genome next generation sequencing) will become a routine test in diagnostics of infectious diseases. This development will require improvement in sample preparation, availability of sequencers in central laboratories and validated pipelines for read sorting and taxonomic assignation. There is no doubt that such an opportunity will sooner than later profoundly change the routine laboratory practice together with the means of conducting microbiological diagnosis.

Here is a study from around the same time showing comparison of existing methods for detecting pathogens in blood.

Here is an editorial which summarises pros and cons and shows that the technique has been successful for detecting a novel virus as a cause of encephalitis.

Here is a more detailed review of its application to discovery of new viruses.

Here is a case study showing the identification of a spirochete (Leptospira) as a cause of an otherwise unidentifiable meningo-encephalitis.

These are just examples to illustrate applicability. Advances are being made all the time which will undoubtedly result in this becoming a standard diagnostic.
 

Hip

Senior Member
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Not only is it not peer reviewed, it presents no methods so reliability of results can't be scrutinised, while results are given as a perfunctory summary - again they can't really be scrutinised.

In short it is not a scientific paper with any credibility, nor does the author appear to have any scientific background that I could find.

From @mango's links above, it appears that the lead researcher of this study, John Brent Hunt, is the founder and CEO of the company Soft Cell Biological Research:
Soft Cell Biological has developed a patent-pending protocol to culture and examine hidden bacteria in the circulatory system. Our ultimate goal is to reveal the link between these bacteria, autoimmune disorders, and recurrent infection.

Preliminary testing reveals that donors suffering from chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, arthritis, and anemia carry high concentrations of L-form bacteria in their blood.

Despite the medical community’s recognition that bodies attack themselves, the source of this process is mysterious—a source we have potentially discovered. In lacking cell walls, these bacteria are able to invade red blood cells, traveling freely throughout the body and eventually taking any cell within as a host. The ability to culture L-form bacteria from two drops of blood reveals new avenues toward solving these problems.

Source: About | Soft Cell Biological Research



In Soft Cell Biological’s laboratory formed in conjunction with Dixie State University, we have developed new methods for the growth of L-form bacteria isolated from synovial, capillary blood, and whole blood samples. Currently, using 16S rRNA sequencing, we have successfully identified several new species of bacteria from humans that appear to act as latent infectors in some populations.

Source: here



John Brent Hunt's patent on his method of screening biological samples for L-form bacteria is here:
Patent US20160168614 - Screening for l-form bacteria - Google Patents
 

alicec

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Australia
John Brent Hunt, is the founder and CEO of the company Soft Cell Biological Research:

Yes I read those links, they are nothing more than advertisements.

None of the information about the CEO on the website or on the ResearchGate link shows any scientific qualifications. I imagine if he had any he would be promoting them.

I've also looked at the patent application (note it is an application, not a granted patent). Pretty vague.

The ResearchGate "paper" and the website rang a lot of alarm bells for me. I'd like to see much more evidence before I take it seriously.
 

alicec

Senior Member
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Location
Australia
I've just read this thread, also posted by @Effi - thank you.

It illustrates the power of NGS which was used to completely sequence the genome of the herpes 7 virus from macaques and further applied to sequence the transcriptome (RNA). Thus they were able to show that the virus is being actively transcribed in the animals.

They then went on to use immunohistochemical techniques to show that the virus is present in the nervous system.

In other words, the high throughput sequencing techniques are revolutionising our ability to probe our microbial companions, be they helpful or unhelpful.

So, getting back to the subject of this thread, l-form bacteria, based on what I've seen so far, I'd prefer to rely on WG-NGS to determine prevalence in blood or other biological samples.
 

Hip

Senior Member
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17,824
@alicec
It does seem a little strange that this discovery has not been published in a peer review scientific journal.


I am quite interested in the L-form bacteria research of Professor Gerald Domingue at Tulane University, New Orleans. He has several studies on the link between L-form infection and disease.

His paper finding an possible L-form infection in interstitial cystitis (IC) I thought was interesting; IC is a common comorbidity of ME/CFS.

Domingue's research found L-forms in a number of kidney-related diseases, and Tulane University developed an antibiotic protocol designed to target L-forms in urinary tract infections (info in this post).
 

alicec

Senior Member
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1,572
Location
Australia
It does seem a little strange that this discovery has not been published in a peer review scientific journal.

I agree, it makes me very suspicious. Also there is no history of scientific publication.

I also agree the L-form bacteria are very interesting - thanks for those links.
 

BruceInOz

Senior Member
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Tasmania
This is from his paper on the subject. Note that this paper is not peer reviewed or published and is only available to download as a word document from ResearchGate:


https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Hunt/publications
The ResearchGate "paper" and the website rang a lot of alarm bells for me. I'd like to see much more evidence before I take it seriously.

A different sort of alarm bell rang for me when I read:

It’s not unlike Einstein’s great and well known equation E=MC2 [that 2 is supposed to be superscript!]: if he had merely written E=MC, it would have equated to nothing more than a group of letters and a sign without the missing factor. I believe that to be the case for L-form and the significance of any treatment, antibiotic, or surgical procedure developed from this point forward that does not consider all factors—namely, the L-factor.

A first year university physics major would see immediately that E=MC cannot be correct since the right hand side does not have the dimensions of energy. My problem when I read interesting sounding biology papers is that I don't know enough biology to know if what I am reading is plausible or if I'm missing something elementary:thumbdown:

Biggest red flag is that the only article with B Hunt as an author and "L-form bacteria" anywhere in the article that google scholar can find is a patent application.
 

Cheesus

Senior Member
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UK
So, getting back to the subject of this thread, l-form bacteria, based on what I've seen so far, I'd prefer to rely on WG-NGS to determine prevalence in blood or other biological samples.

That's what I wanted to hear. If there is something there then Lipkin should find it.