Dr Markov CBIS Theory of ME/CFS - General Discussion

[Cipher]

I’ve done some testing and it seems like submersing the dip-slide in a urine sample for 20 seconds while continuously moving it around is much more sensitive than placing the dip-slide in the urine stream for a second or two. I also compared mid-day urine to morning urine.

The submersion time of 20 seconds is pretty arbitrary, most dip-slide instructions says 10 seconds, so I just went with something a bit higher. I’ve gotten one positive culture using the stream-method a while back, but that seems to be pretty rare for me.

I think most bacteria have the ability to adhere to surfaces, and I would guess this is why the submersion-method is more sensitive because it gives the bacteria more chances to grab a hold of the agar surface.

I applied chlorhexidine to the urethral opening to reduce the risk of contamination, and used the mid-stream portion of the urine.

For this test I collected my urine in a drinking glass with a silicone lid that I heat-sterilized in the oven (1h @ 170C). In retrospect it would’ve been easier to just collect the urine in the sterile container that the dip-slide comes with.

I’ll try to identify the bacteria using the Brilliance UTI agar among others.

 

[Hip]

submersing the dip-slide in a urine sample for 20 seconds while continuously moving it around is much more sensitive than placing the dip-slide in the urine stream for a second or two.

This is a very interesting discovery, and everyone here who is trying to culture bacteria from their urine might like to experiment with this method.

As Cipher says, you can use the plastic tube that each dipslide comes with to collect the urine, then place the dipslide into the urine in the tube for 20 seconds.

 

[Hipsman]

Fantastic work @Cipher ! At what temperature did you culture the bacteria?

 

[Cipher]

Fantastic work @Cipher ! At what temperature did you culture the bacteria?

I incubated the dip-slides at 37C in an incubator I made a couple of years ago to grow probiotic bacteria, consisting of a "cool box", a CPU heatsink, a fan, a resistor and a thermostat.

 

[BrightCandle]

I seem to recall the instructions I saw said to put it in for 30 seconds, that is the process I have been following. I redid the two that failed to show growth this week, they have failed again. Looking more and more likely that I don't have a kidney infection or nothing like what I had before, the cranberry intervention may work, alas its not correlated with symptoms.

 

[Reading_Steiner]

Was LPS ever shown to be in our blood at irregularly high levels ? its good that people are chasing all these leads, this one and the LC micro clot one. I have trouble even creating wine correctly so I think I will give this experiment a miss for now.

 

[Cipher]

I seem to recall the instructions I saw said to put it in for 30 seconds, that is the process I have been following. I redid the two that failed to show growth this week, they have failed again. Looking more and more likely that I don't have a kidney infection or nothing like what I had before, the cranberry intervention may work, alas its not correlated with symptoms.

Are you still taking the cranberry? If it inhibits the bacteria's ability to adhere to the bladder wall, then it might also inhibit the bacteria's ability to adhere to the agar surface.

 

[Hipsman]

the cranberry intervention may work, alas its not correlated with symptoms.

Last two times I did the testing, I discontinued the cranberry a week before starting the test, then I took high dose for 3 consecutive days (since I was doing 3-day in a row testing). What I found is that both times only the first day showed positive result, second and third day were negative, perhaps because most bacteria were flushed out on first day.

So you may want to try the same as I did, discontinue cranberry a week before testing and take a high-ish dose the night before testing, so that much more bacteria will get flushed out in the mourning urine (if there is any)

Are you still taking the cranberry? If it inhibits the bacteria's ability to adhere to the bladder wall, then it might also inhibit the bacteria's ability to adhere to the agar surface.

Probably not a significant difference since Dr. Igor Markov prescribes supplement with main ingredient being cranberry

 

[Hip]

Was LPS ever shown to be in our blood at irregularly high levels ? its good that people are chasing all these leads, this one and the LC micro clot one. I have trouble even creating wine correctly so I think I will give this experiment a miss for now.

One study showed that ME/CFS patients have higher than normal levels of LPS in their blood (but not all patients have this). However, remember that LPS is just one of hundreds of different bacterial toxins that bacteria make, and it seems nobody apart from Dr Markov has looked to see if bacteria toxins in general are high in ME/CFS.

Dr Markov used a lab test available in the Ukraine called the Toxicon test to measure levels of bacterial toxins in ME/CFS patients. He found that 81% of patients have severe levels of bacteria toxins, and another 17% have moderate levels of these toxins. Details given in the first post of this thread.



Bacterial toxins are extremely potent . The lethal dose of botulinum toxin for example (which is produced by the Clostridium botulinum) is around 2 nanograms. Botulinum toxin is the most potent toxin known (this is the toxin used in botox treatments, at low doses in the picogram range).

The lethal dose of Staphylococcus TSST-1 toxin is in the microgram range.

The lethal dose of injected LPS is around 1 microgram, although we can consume this toxin orally without ill effects. In fact we have around 20 grams of LPS in our intestines, which does no harm there, but if even 1 microgram of that LPS escaped your gut an entered your blood stream, it would be fatal.

 

[lint7]

Has anyone here had low GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate)? This could be an indication that there is an infection in the kidneys. I have recently received results showing mildly decreased kidney function and I have really foamy urine, so I need to investigate this.

 

[Hip]

Has anyone here had low GFR (Glomerular Filtration Rate)? This could be an indication that there is an infection in the kidneys. I have recently received results showing mildly decreased kidney function and I have really foamy urine, so I need to investigate this.

Looking at my medical records, my GFR calculated abbreviated MDRD was tested a number of times with values ranging from 57 to 90 mL/min/1.73m2. The figure of 90 was the most recent result.

There is no normal range given in my lab tests, but this article says :

90+ = Normal renal function
60-89 = Mildly reduced renal function
45-59 = Moderate decrease in renal function

 

[BrightCandle]

Looking at my medical records, my GFR calculated abbreviated MDRD was tested a number of times with values ranging from 57 to 90 mL/min/1.73m2. The figure of 90 was the most recent result.

There is no normal range given in my lab tests, but this article says :

90+ = Normal renal function
60-89 = Mildly reduced renal function
45-59 = Moderate decrease in renal function

Are you me? My GFR has been anywhere from 57 to 90 over the period of years and my doctor calls it chronic kidney failure. Unfortunately what he can't explain is how a chronic problem gets better...he had zero answers for that especially since it went up so much to normality from stage 2 failure. I see the same thing and it just fluctuates every time they test it, no obvious line of decrease or increase just random results. Its got to the point where my GP just stopped testing it, they are meant to monitor kidney failure every 6 months but their lack of ability to explain how it recovered then went back (and they did zero investigation because its well its the NHS!) they just kind of skipped on doing it.

 

[Hip]

I see the same thing and it just fluctuates every time they test it, no obvious line of decrease or increase just random results. Its got to the point where my GP just stopped testing it, they are meant to monitor kidney failure every 6 months but their lack of ability to explain how it recovered then went back (and they did zero investigation because its well its the NHS!) they just kind of skipped on doing it.

That's very interesting. My GP did not even mention my kidney results to me (or at least I don't remember him doing so, but I may have been too brain fogged to notice). I only learnt that I had had these kidney GFR tests when I recently downloaded all my NHS test results from websites like www.patientaccess.com and www.nhsapp.service.nhs.uk.

These are my GFR calculated abbreviated MDRD results (in units of mL/min/1.73m2):

Jan 2009 — 73
Sep 2011 — 61
Oct 2011 — 57

Feb 2012 — 81
Dec 2012 — greater than 90

I seemed to have a low glomerular filtration rate (GFR), but then in 2012 for some reason things improved. This could be because in 2012 I discovered some treatments which I found helped my symptoms, and one was high dose selenium. Now selenium increases GFR.

I wonder how many other ME/CFS patients have these abnormal or fluctuating GFR test results?



When I was investigating how a viral infection might possibly lead to the kidney dysbiosis that Dr Markov reports in ME/CFS patients, I found that some ME/CFS viruses are able to chronically infect the glomerular vascular unit in the kidney.

These glomerulus-infecting viruses I found are coxsackievirus B, cytomegalovirus and parvovirus B19, all classic ME/CFS viruses. These viruses infect the mesangial cells in the glomerular vascular unit.

The glomerulus is where the blood passes through the kidneys and is cleaned and filtered. So presumably if bacterial toxins are leaking into the bloodstream from the kidneys, this leak would probably be located in the glomeruli.

So my thinking was, if the glomeruli are chronically infected with viruses, this could create a leak, and might also be responsible for creating the bacteria dysbiosis in the kidneys that Dr Markov finds.

Thus I was hypothesizing that if you catch one of these viruses, and it happens to infect your kidney glomeruli, that's when you develop ME/CFS (if other conditions are right, such as the presence of bacteria in the glomeruli to begin with).

 

[BrightCandle]

Thus I was hypothesizing that if you catch one of these viruses, and it happens to infect your kidney glomeruli, that's when you develop ME/CFS (if other conditions are right, such as the presence of bacteria in the glomeruli to begin with).

Definitely possible. I am wondering what the true impact of the cranberries is. Maybe its reducing the replication and there is less virus and its flushing it out as suggested so there is less, but maybe its making it stick more and not leave in the urine as much. Its doing something but I haven't had a GFR in a while since I become housebound and my GP started ignoring me, I don't anticipate getting that updated until next year unless the anticoagulants allow me to do home blood tests.

A GFR of 40 is dialysis levels of kidney dysfunction so at times some of our symptoms will be from kidney failure. I have known for most of this year that ammonia disposal has been a big part of reducing my headaches and symptoms and that could very well just be to do with the kidneys failing to reduce it. I never see high nitrate values in my urine and yet ammonia disposal drugs seem to be really quite effective, that could very well be kidney issues failing to dispose of it. But even then they aren't bad enough to just not be able to get rid of a clear body toxin so this just really confuses me, I have no idea what is going on here and testing the blood is a bit tricky at home.

I get a varying amount of foam with my urine. My doctor seems to think that is protein and I do get trace amounts of protein out in my urine sometimes, but there is no way its causing that amount of foam, there is something else in there and if the urine sticks were not telling me the nitrates were 0 I would suspect Ammonia. Kidney dysfunction is definitely making things worse, root cause as always is painfully hard to tell until treating the bacterial or viral infections results in recovery and the test results on dipsticks and GFR changes.

One potential upside of the "chronic kidney disease" is I might one day get a test bad enough that they send me for dialysis. Its not quite HELP apheresis but I can't help but think a bit of blood filtering of any type might actually help!

 

[Cipher]

A GFR of 40 is dialysis levels of kidney dysfunction

Dialysis is normally initiated when the GFR is <15 ml/min/1.73 m2. That's normally when you get more symptomatic.

 

[Hip]

One potential upside of the "chronic kidney disease" is I might one day get a test bad enough that they send me for dialysis. Its not quite HELP apheresis but I can't help but think a bit of blood filtering of any type might actually help!

I was thinking along those lines, as a means to test Dr Markov's CBIS theory that toxins leaking from the kidney are the cause of ME/CFS.

If one could shunt the kidney blood supply and divert it through a dialysis machine, in a way which temporarily removes the kidneys from blood filtration circuit (but still providing the kidneys with enough blood supply keep these organs alive), you might expect ME/CFS symptoms to rapidly improve as the bacterial toxins are removed from the blood by the liver. That is, assuming Dr Markov's NephroDysbacteriosis theory is correct.

The blood half life of the LPS bacterial toxin is very short, a matter of minutes in mice studies. I am not sure about the half-life of other bacterial toxins, but I think within days bacterial toxins levels would go down if the kidneys could be temporarily removed from the blood circulation.

However, dialysis would not achieve this, as the dialysis machine does not result in bypassing the kidneys. The kidneys are still in the blood circulation during dialysis. You would need dialysis, but also a surgical clamp on the kidney blood supply to reduce the kidney blood flow to a trickle. I am not sure if this could be safely done, but it would be a neat way to prove or disprove the theory.

 

[Cipher]

@Hip @BrightCandle Something to keep in mind is that creatine supplementation can give false-high creatinine readings (which is used to calculate eGFR).

My GFR has been anywhere from 57 to 90 over the period of years and my doctor calls it chronic kidney failure. Unfortunately what he can't explain is how a chronic problem gets better...he had zero answers for that especially since it went up so much to normality from stage 2 failure.

You might wanna go to a nephrologist to get a proper investigation done.

 

[Hip]

@Hip @BrightCandle Something to keep in mind is that creatine supplementation can give false-high creatinine readings (which is used to calculate eGFR).

Good info. Just checked my supplements and drugs journal, and I was not taking creatine during the months when my kidney function tests were done.

 

[lint7]

I get a varying amount of foam with my urine. My doctor seems to think that is protein and I do get trace amounts of protein out in my urine sometimes, but there is no way its causing that amount of foam, there is something else in there and if the urine sticks were not telling me the nitrates were 0 I would suspect Ammonia.

I've got so much foam it looks like draught beer, and all tests for proteinuria have been negative. Apparently something like 2/3rds of cases of foamy urine are negative for protein and there are other metabolites, and even infections, that are thought to cause it. I can't remember which ones off the top of my head but I couldn't find any tests for them.

 

[BrightCandle]

Good info. Just checked my supplements and drugs journal, and I was not taking creatine during the months when my kidney function tests were done.

Nor was I.