New discovery: L-form bacteria survive in the blood for years
- Thread starter Effi
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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?
@alicec Is next generation sequencing likely to show a bacterial infection like this?
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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 Note that this paper is not peer reviewed or published and is only available to download as a word document from ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Hunt/publications
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Brent_Hunt/publications
Dufresne
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Apparently not. Indeed I think it's quite amazing what NGS doesn't show.
Could you expand on that a little? What do you mean?
Not only is it not peer reviewed, it presents no methods so reliability of results can't be scrutinised, while results are given as a perfunctory summary - again they can't really be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.
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 :-
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.
Yes please expand.
Hip
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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:
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
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.
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.
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
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@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).
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).
A different sort of alarm bell rang for me when I read:
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.
That's what I wanted to hear. If there is something there then Lipkin should find it.