I am a man, 25, suffering from extremely severe, atypical CFS/ME with objective abnormalities. My illness was triggered three years ago when herbal antimicrobials caused me to crash from prodromal CFS/ME into serious illness. Strangely, the antimicrobials caused very foamy urine. The foam declined but did not disappear after discontinuing the antimicrobials. Testing is consistently negative for proteinuria (excess protein is the only known cause of foamy urine). Probiotics cause dramatic fluctuations in this symptom, which is sometimes seen on Lyme and Candida forums.
A year after onset I discovered a liver enzyme (ALT) was elevated. All known causes are ruled out. After a period when the foamy urine was considerably elevated, my ALT went from ~100 to 330 (reference range 0-40). The foam declined and my ALT fell back to ~100.
Because antimicrobials triggered the idiopathic foamy urine, I hypothesised that the cause of my atypical CFS/ME and elevated ALT is a novel bacterial toxin that is visible as foam in my urine. As probiotics can influence this symptom, I surmised the bacteria is in my gut. To investigate, I had my gut microbiome profiled as part of the British Gut Project at Kings College London.
According to my report, the Gram-negative genus paraprevotella comprises 0.5% of total bacteria in the average gut. In my gut, paraprevotella comprises 12.5% of total bacteria. Very little is known about paraprevotella and it produces a number of "unknown fatty acids."
In addition to this unusual overgrowth was a marked lack of diversity. Two genera, bacteroides and paraprevotella, account for ~70% of total bacteria. Furthermore my PCR did not detect any lactobacilli, bifidobacteria, escherichia, butyrivibrio, veillonella, streptococcus, peptococcus or even prevotella. There are possibly other genera absent that I am not familiar with. The test is sensitive to genera accounting for >0.01%. My gut is radically different to both patients and controls in existing research on the gut microbiome in CFS/ME.
I have no GI symptoms at all.
My plan is to have a Fecal Microbial Transplant at the Taymount Clinic, but I am not nearly well enough at the minute. I am seeing some green shoots of improvement 2 months into a methylation protocol after 18 months of no change.
What do you all think?
ETA: If you want to a full profile of the bacteria in your gut, you can get a 10% discount at uBiome with this link:
http://ubiome.refr.cc/T3B95SK