Dr Markov CBIS Theory of ME/CFS - General Discussion
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I wouldn’t be surprised if my severe M.E. was caused by something like this. I had a couple of months of severe UTI infections and kidney/stomach pain prior to diagnosis. Mutaflor helped when I was very severe. Just thinking out loud.
To be fair, I think we have seen from the specialized way that ME/CFS doctors test ME/CFS patients for pathogens that standard testing may not always be sensitive enough.
Dr John Chia for example found that most antibody testing methods for enterovirus are insensitive for the chronic low-level enterovirus infections found in ME/CFS patients, and only antibody tests by the neutralization method are sufficiently sensitive. This is Dr Chia's own personal discovery, and other doctors do not know about it. And ME/CFS doctors also interpret antibody tests differently to regular infectious disease doctors (they view chronic high IgG as evidence for a hidden infection in the ME/CFS patient).
And we know that for Lyme disease testing, even the most sensitive tests available today may miss a Borrelia infection, and labs are always trying to improve the sensitivity of these tests.
So if Dr Igor Markov has found that freshly voided urine provides greater sensitivity for detecting what is likely a low-level infection in the kidneys, that would be a good enough reason to use freshly voided urine.
Dr John Chia for example found that most antibody testing methods for enterovirus are insensitive for the chronic low-level enterovirus infections found in ME/CFS patients, and only antibody tests by the neutralization method are sufficiently sensitive. This is Dr Chia's own personal discovery, and other doctors do not know about it. And ME/CFS doctors also interpret antibody tests differently to regular infectious disease doctors (they view chronic high IgG as evidence for a hidden infection in the ME/CFS patient).
And we know that for Lyme disease testing, even the most sensitive tests available today may miss a Borrelia infection, and labs are always trying to improve the sensitivity of these tests.
So if Dr Igor Markov has found that freshly voided urine provides greater sensitivity for detecting what is likely a low-level infection in the kidneys, that would be a good enough reason to use freshly voided urine.
Fair enough but the bar for making categorical claims is third party replication.
Since none of this is space age science this would be easier to accomplish than cutting edge science currently being done at world renowned institutions.
Since none of this is space age science this would be easier to accomplish than cutting edge science currently being done at world renowned institutions.
Genova Diagnostics recently held a webinar which I took notes from and they now have a SIBO pattern guide to suggest an individual's likely issue with SIBO taken from the individual's result of the latest G I Effects stool test.
I went through this with my results from last year and it is virtually spot on to what was found on my test. I hadn't fully understood it before and because we were in lockdown when I got my results through I missed many pointers and there wasn't anybody around to ask questions.
One thing specifically I noted was that there is a Methane Dysbiosis score on a small chart and the presenter said that anything over 9 meant that treatment was indicated along with the many other biomarkers like a high amount of Products of Protein Breakdown for instance and again mine was high in this section. Obviously there were many more pointers which were positive in relation to my test.
Another thing that I hadn't fully realised (maybe I was being a bit dim here) but excess methane archaea (they are not bacteria) caused immune system dysfunction, it literally holds down the immune system and the presenter explained the scenario of a patient who constantly keeps picking up viruses/infections etc and this is absolutely how I am and have been for years.
Another important contributory factor which can exasperate SIBO is a too high-level of the Commensal bacteria called Desulfovibrio Piger which is a hydrogen sulphur producing bacteria. Methane gobbles up hydrogen so this perpetuates the problem and one would know if one has this issue because of things like foul smelling gases especially after eating. Also it will mean that no matter what one eats you end up with low butyrate which is the foremost beneficial short chain fatty acid. Again I always have a low level of butyrate in all the tests I have done but high amounts of the other fatty acids tested, acetate and propionate (another indicator of SIBO).
I now can make a plan to try and improve my situation which will be with various antimicrobial herbs, lower
FODMAP diet etc and will see if my symptoms improve but I was really impressed with how Genova have presented a plan of action looking at the various biomarkers from their G I Effects stool test.
Pam
I went through this with my results from last year and it is virtually spot on to what was found on my test. I hadn't fully understood it before and because we were in lockdown when I got my results through I missed many pointers and there wasn't anybody around to ask questions.
One thing specifically I noted was that there is a Methane Dysbiosis score on a small chart and the presenter said that anything over 9 meant that treatment was indicated along with the many other biomarkers like a high amount of Products of Protein Breakdown for instance and again mine was high in this section. Obviously there were many more pointers which were positive in relation to my test.
Another thing that I hadn't fully realised (maybe I was being a bit dim here) but excess methane archaea (they are not bacteria) caused immune system dysfunction, it literally holds down the immune system and the presenter explained the scenario of a patient who constantly keeps picking up viruses/infections etc and this is absolutely how I am and have been for years.
Another important contributory factor which can exasperate SIBO is a too high-level of the Commensal bacteria called Desulfovibrio Piger which is a hydrogen sulphur producing bacteria. Methane gobbles up hydrogen so this perpetuates the problem and one would know if one has this issue because of things like foul smelling gases especially after eating. Also it will mean that no matter what one eats you end up with low butyrate which is the foremost beneficial short chain fatty acid. Again I always have a low level of butyrate in all the tests I have done but high amounts of the other fatty acids tested, acetate and propionate (another indicator of SIBO).
I now can make a plan to try and improve my situation which will be with various antimicrobial herbs, lower
FODMAP diet etc and will see if my symptoms improve but I was really impressed with how Genova have presented a plan of action looking at the various biomarkers from their G I Effects stool test.
Pam
Of course the issue is sensitivity and specificity tested against a healthy control. If 50 urine samples were blindly tested and 25 of them were from healthy people and 25 from people with moderate to severe CFS, what would be the accuracy of this urine test?
If a test cannot be validated, then it's not useful. If you find the bacteria in 100% of the samples you get from CFS patients but have never tested it against healthy controls, then how do you know it's not present there as well?
This is why tests are validated (and also a problem with many of the super sensitive lyme tests). It is also a difficulty in something like CFS where there's no gold standard of diagnosis, so how do we know if someone has the disorder we call 'CFS'? Which is why people asked about Fukuda criteria or other such methodologies.
Anyone who is claiming 90% success rates means they are able to 'cure' people who at various times have likely considered themselves run down, chronic lyme, CFS, MCAS, CIRS, and so on. If that's so, there should be bestselling books and a whirlwind of appearances (at least at the level of the researcher who discovered H Pylori or maybe discovered penicillin?).
If a test cannot be validated, then it's not useful. If you find the bacteria in 100% of the samples you get from CFS patients but have never tested it against healthy controls, then how do you know it's not present there as well?
This is why tests are validated (and also a problem with many of the super sensitive lyme tests). It is also a difficulty in something like CFS where there's no gold standard of diagnosis, so how do we know if someone has the disorder we call 'CFS'? Which is why people asked about Fukuda criteria or other such methodologies.
Anyone who is claiming 90% success rates means they are able to 'cure' people who at various times have likely considered themselves run down, chronic lyme, CFS, MCAS, CIRS, and so on. If that's so, there should be bestselling books and a whirlwind of appearances (at least at the level of the researcher who discovered H Pylori or maybe discovered penicillin?).
Yes that is right.
You really need to perform the same urine culture test on healthy controls as well as ME/CFS patients, and compare the results.
You can only state that ME/CFS patients have a urinary tract or kidney infection if you find these infections significantly more often in patients compared to controls. That research must be done before you can say that ME/CFS patients have kidney infections.
Note that Dr Igor Markov also detects these kidney infections in patients with other diseases. In fact I have read that Dr Markov tends to diagnose many of his patients with a kidney infection, and then treats with an autovaccine. So he finds this infection not just in his ME/CFS patients.
This means that these kidney infections are not unique to ME/CFS, and thus cannot be the sole cause of ME/CFS. However, such kidney infections could be playing a causal role in ME/CFS, just as SIBO may be playing a causal role in ME/CFS (or if not playing a causal role, may worsen symptoms like fatigue).
Whether ME/CFS patients do have kidney infections more commonly than healthy controls is, however, a separate issue to the question of the benefit of an autovaccine for ME/CFS.
Even if ME/CFS patients did not have kidney infections more commonly than controls, it is still possible that an autovaccine might benefit, since that vaccine may be strengthening immune responses to pathogens carried by that individual in the kidneys and throughout the body.
You really need to perform the same urine culture test on healthy controls as well as ME/CFS patients, and compare the results.
You can only state that ME/CFS patients have a urinary tract or kidney infection if you find these infections significantly more often in patients compared to controls. That research must be done before you can say that ME/CFS patients have kidney infections.
Note that Dr Igor Markov also detects these kidney infections in patients with other diseases. In fact I have read that Dr Markov tends to diagnose many of his patients with a kidney infection, and then treats with an autovaccine. So he finds this infection not just in his ME/CFS patients.
This means that these kidney infections are not unique to ME/CFS, and thus cannot be the sole cause of ME/CFS. However, such kidney infections could be playing a causal role in ME/CFS, just as SIBO may be playing a causal role in ME/CFS (or if not playing a causal role, may worsen symptoms like fatigue).
Whether ME/CFS patients do have kidney infections more commonly than healthy controls is, however, a separate issue to the question of the benefit of an autovaccine for ME/CFS.
Even if ME/CFS patients did not have kidney infections more commonly than controls, it is still possible that an autovaccine might benefit, since that vaccine may be strengthening immune responses to pathogens carried by that individual in the kidneys and throughout the body.
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For those of you interested in autovaccines this paper gives a good background to their use and what changes to the immune system they can bring about.
We should pick one guinea pig, send h** to Ukrainian and check it out
(Or support hipsman, would save the travel)
(Or support hipsman, would save the travel
)
Great!! Count me in. Donation of £100 from me.
Id be willing to as well. Do we even know how
Much this cost yet?
@ME/CFS - Mystery No More! Under ME/CFS hides CBIS - how much does treatment cost. We are thinking of sending a member to y’alls clinic.
Much this cost yet?
@ME/CFS - Mystery No More! Under ME/CFS hides CBIS - how much does treatment cost. We are thinking of sending a member to y’alls clinic.
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@Hip , just wanted to say you're an absolute legend for all the research and investigating you do, thank you
So I have been watching Dr Markov's videos and reading through this thread and this is what I make of it. Please let me know if I've gotten anything dramatically wrong.
Essentially his diagnosis of the problem is that it's gut dysbiosis; our intestinal microbiota have been altered and harmful bacteria have been allowed to proliferate.
Then the toxins produced by said bacteria are processed by the kidneys and excreted in the urine, hence the high numbers present in patients' urine (NB - Has there been confirmation anywhere that a control sample of "healthy" subjects tested negative for said urine toxins, I haven't seen any?)
This is where I get a bit lost, so if anyone could clarify that would be great. Markov's hypothesis seems to then suggest that these rogue bacteria also live in the kidneys, or on organ surfaces (?), and that this is why standard antibiotics don't work in treating this illness, which he calls CBIS.
Markov's solution seems to entail the creation of personalised "autovaccines", made from the very bacterial toxins expelled from the patient. The resultant autovaccine is then injected back into the patient which triggers the patient's immune system to identify and kill said bad bacteria, and CFS goes into remission. (The idea being that the patient's immune system is for whatever reason ignoring these bad bacterial strains through years of having gotten used to their existing in the intestines, and the autovaccine triggers it to recognise them as foreign invaders and take care of the bacteria itself.)
Essentially his diagnosis of the problem is that it's gut dysbiosis; our intestinal microbiota have been altered and harmful bacteria have been allowed to proliferate.
Then the toxins produced by said bacteria are processed by the kidneys and excreted in the urine, hence the high numbers present in patients' urine (NB - Has there been confirmation anywhere that a control sample of "healthy" subjects tested negative for said urine toxins, I haven't seen any?)
This is where I get a bit lost, so if anyone could clarify that would be great. Markov's hypothesis seems to then suggest that these rogue bacteria also live in the kidneys, or on organ surfaces (?), and that this is why standard antibiotics don't work in treating this illness, which he calls CBIS.
Markov's solution seems to entail the creation of personalised "autovaccines", made from the very bacterial toxins expelled from the patient. The resultant autovaccine is then injected back into the patient which triggers the patient's immune system to identify and kill said bad bacteria, and CFS goes into remission. (The idea being that the patient's immune system is for whatever reason ignoring these bad bacterial strains through years of having gotten used to their existing in the intestines, and the autovaccine triggers it to recognise them as foreign invaders and take care of the bacteria itself.)
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All that said, is all sounds pretty rational. We've all heard about gut dysbiosis and disturbances to the microbiome are increasingly spoken about as a possible cause of ME/CFS. And even if the actual trigger for a patient's CFS is viral or fungal in nature it could also be the case that an altered microbiome was the initial cause for a depleted immune system that allowed said virus or fungus to take hold. And that restoration of a healthy microbiome could potentially trigger improvements in one's immune system that allow it to get rid of CFS-causing viruses/whatever.
As for the autovaccines, the first I'd read about it was in this thread, but apparently they're around for a while and are widely used in animals so I see no reason to discount that.
Where I'm more skeptical is all this stuff about the bacteria residing in the kidneys, or on the organs. And why antibiotics wouldn't work. If it was all a case of gut dysbiosis then surely FMTs or probiotics like Symprove that gradually restore the microbiome would do the trick?
And maybe it's just the cynic in me but surely if 100% of thousands of patients had recovered from CFS over a number of years then surely this would be international news, not least since the focus on CFS has gone up what with all the stuff on long Covid?
The main thing I'm wanting right now is more data. Surely there are reams of data on all these patients that have been cured, and accounts from the patients themselves. The OP of this thread seems to suggest that people are unwilling to talk about their ME once recovered, I'm sorry but I'm not buying it. The first thing I'm doing if I ever get better is spreading the word of what cured me as far and wide as possible in case it helps some poor soul who was in my shoes. It's little things like that that are ringing alarm bells for me. I so want to believe though...
What are the next steps? Is this easy to test for? Can we get some data on healthy controls? Are autovaccines available to be produced easily, how is it done in Ukraine? How long is the prognosis for recovery? Is it for severe ME patients too?
As for the autovaccines, the first I'd read about it was in this thread, but apparently they're around for a while and are widely used in animals so I see no reason to discount that.
Where I'm more skeptical is all this stuff about the bacteria residing in the kidneys, or on the organs. And why antibiotics wouldn't work. If it was all a case of gut dysbiosis then surely FMTs or probiotics like Symprove that gradually restore the microbiome would do the trick?
And maybe it's just the cynic in me but surely if 100% of thousands of patients had recovered from CFS over a number of years then surely this would be international news, not least since the focus on CFS has gone up what with all the stuff on long Covid?
The main thing I'm wanting right now is more data. Surely there are reams of data on all these patients that have been cured, and accounts from the patients themselves. The OP of this thread seems to suggest that people are unwilling to talk about their ME once recovered, I'm sorry but I'm not buying it. The first thing I'm doing if I ever get better is spreading the word of what cured me as far and wide as possible in case it helps some poor soul who was in my shoes. It's little things like that that are ringing alarm bells for me. I so want to believe though...
What are the next steps? Is this easy to test for? Can we get some data on healthy controls? Are autovaccines available to be produced easily, how is it done in Ukraine? How long is the prognosis for recovery? Is it for severe ME patients too?
I like your approach, @Martin aka paused||M.E. . Let's see if we can replicate this trademarked "Nephrodysbacteriosis©" before injecting some guinea pig with autovaccines that haven't been looked at independently.
My understanding of the Markov theory is that the dysbiosis occurs in the kidney microbiome, rather than the gut microbiome, and then the bacterial endotoxin produced by these bacteria in the kidneys leaks straight into the bloodstream.
In an earlier post (quoted below), @ME/CFS - Mystery No More! Under ME/CFS hides CBIS said that the kidneys process and filter a high amount of blood each day (up to 2000 liters), filtered by kidney glomeruli, and this volume of blood is incomparably greater than that which passes through the intestines.
So according to Dr Markov, there is comparatively more opportunity for LPS endotoxin from bacteria in the kidneys to enter the bloodstream, compared to analogous situation in the intestines.
The total filtration surface area of kidney glomeruli is about 500 square centimeters (according to this paper).
In an earlier post (quoted below), @ME/CFS - Mystery No More! Under ME/CFS hides CBIS said that the kidneys process and filter a high amount of blood each day (up to 2000 liters), filtered by kidney glomeruli, and this volume of blood is incomparably greater than that which passes through the intestines.
So according to Dr Markov, there is comparatively more opportunity for LPS endotoxin from bacteria in the kidneys to enter the bloodstream, compared to analogous situation in the intestines.
The total filtration surface area of kidney glomeruli is about 500 square centimeters (according to this paper).
Has Dr. Markov said how they know the bacteria are from the kidneys, instead of some other place in the body?
Ah OK, thanks for clarifying. I wasn't aware the kidneys had a microbiome!
Surely gut bacterial toxins that leak into the bloodstream would end up getting processed by the kidneys too, and therefore excreted in the urine?
And assuming this is the case, would the sheer quantity of bacteria living in the intestine (relative to the kidneys or anywhere else) not suggest that most bacterial toxins present in the urine would have likely originated in the gut, and not the kidneys?
And assuming this is the case, would the sheer quantity of bacteria living in the intestine (relative to the kidneys or anywhere else) not suggest that most bacterial toxins present in the urine would have likely originated in the gut, and not the kidneys?