Potassium Arsenite 0.05% Cures CFS in Falcons, so what about humans?

[Hip]

But @Hip how many people with ME/CFS actually get tested for Staph? An ND I consulted in the US (I'm in the UK) said I most likely had a chronic staph infection. Sticky eyes most morning, boils etc. I never had any treatment though.

Bacteremia is easily detected via a white blood cell count, so if any ME/CFS patients had bacteremia, a standard blood test (full blood count) would presumably pick it up, and antibiotics would normally treat it.

Possibly Tarello and his wife may have had bacteremia from a more virulent strain of Staphylococcus, such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which was not treatable with antibiotics, and could only be brought under control by potassium arsenite treatment. Perhaps normally, such bacteremia is successfully treated with antibiotics.

But if this were the case, then you would occasionally expect to hear of other cases of Staphylococcus bacteremia-induced ME/CFS, when someone developed bacteremia from a more virulent Staphylococcus strain. But we don't. Just the case of Tarello and his wife. So this still makes no sense to me.


That aside, I guess having Staphylococcus in the body, even without bacteremia, might conceivably be contributing to ME/CFS symptoms or etiology. This article says that one of the toxins manufactured by Staphylococcus bacteria, enterotoxin B, when injected into mice cause a lupus-like disease. On the other hand, enterotoxin B might actually be helpful in virally-induce ME/CFS, because this toxin promotes the antiviral Th1 response.

I have read of others claiming CFS to staph. Below is a link of one of the earlier studies on this subject:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12413434/

Symptoms improved significantly but maintained injections were required to prevent relapse.

Another thread on Staph and CFS:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/staph-vaccine-to-treat-cfs.3788/

Regarding Prof Gottfries research on Staphylococcus toxoid vaccine and its benefits for ME/CFS:

This Staphylococcus toxoid vaccine contains a toxin called alpha toxin (also known as alpha hemolysin). Though it's not clear to me whether this vaccine helps ME/CFS because of the benefits of alpha toxin (alpha toxin has been shown to correct the immunodeficiency induced by coxsackievirus B), or because the vaccine educates the immune system to destroy alpha toxin, so that the body then neutralizes the alpha toxin created by Staphylococcus bacteria in the body. I suspect it is the former reason, though.

I would love to try this vaccine, incidentally, but the company that manufactured it ceased production, which is very upsetting.

 

[Hip]

One strategy to minimize the cancer-inducing risks of these arsenic compounds might be to undertake a long detoxification program for several years after you take the arsenic treatment. It is believe that the cancer risks from arsenic arise from the total lifetime accumulated dose of arsenic in your body. The higher the level of arsenic in your body, the higher the cancer risk.

As calculated above, when you take the 10 day potassium arsenite treatment that Tarello used, you will add 51 mg of extra arsenic to your total body burden of arsenic, and this of course will increase you cancer risk.

How much risk of cancer is there from this 51 mg of arsenic? Well, you can work out from my calculation above that for every 1000 people that take this 10 day potassium arsenite treatment, 1 will develop cancer from it. Since cancer is often fatal, that means roughly you have a 1 in 1000 chance of later dying from taking this potassium arsenite treatment.

However, if after taking the potassium arsenite you then undertook an arsenic detoxification program, so as to remove this arsenic from your body, presumably you will have annulled that increased cancer risk.

This paper says DMSA, taurine and N-acetyl-cysteine help remove arsenic from the body. This article says selenium and modified citrus pectin help detoxify arsenic.

 

[Helen]

@Hip

Correct, they Definetely had Staph blood infection. Remember why the NIH rejected Lipkins microbiome grant request? 'CFS was a disease caused by a herpes infection of the White blood cells'.

It is entirely credible, as you've clearly pointed out, to theorise that any given treatment, if it works as it has done in this case, may have worked due to eradicating something completely different to your target.

Perhaps Staph is what Tarello was aiming for with the arsenic, but who knows what other pathogen it eradicated?

I have read of others claiming CFS to staph. Below is a link of one of the earlier studies on this subject:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12413434/

Symptoms improved significantly but maintained injections were required to prevent relapse.

Another thread on Staph and CFS:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/staph-vaccine-to-treat-cfs.3788/

Perhaps dose was too low to eradicate it once and for all? However, The arsenic was lethal enough to achieve this?

The treatment with the staph vaccin had nothing to do with if there was a present staph infection or not in the patients with a successful result , according to one of the doctors conducting the study. The vaccine acts as an immune modulator. I live 70 km from the clinic where the studies were done and get information from PWME and doctors whith experience from treatment with the vaccine. There are still people on the treatment -they stored the vaccine for the future.

I agree with @Hip and others that it is very frustrating that the vaccine isn´t available. I did some research and I found (if right) that the company which started the production was bought by Johnson&Johnson but it seems like there is a Spanish company named like the original in Switzerland, that still produces the vaccine, I guess still with mercury/thiomersal as a preservative.
http://www.vademecum.com/laboratorios-farmaceuticos/crucell-berna-biotech-espana.asp

Maybe someone living in Spain could check with the pharmacy Vademecum if it is available? @serg1942 or anyone else?

Hopefully it would be possible to get the vaccine with another preservative. The cost for a drug test shouldn´t hinder this with such a big market =PWME.

 

[serg1942]

Hi @Helen, sorry, i am still recovering from my 3 months in BXL as u know! Yeap, I could try to find out about this. I'll read the paper in depth soon and will let you know, ok?

Till soon!
Sergio

 

[Violeta]

There is a potassium arsenite and several other arsenite cell salts. I wonder if one of them would work. The copper arsenite looks better to me than the potassium.

http://schuessler-cell-salts.com/additional-cell-salts/index.htm

 

[Hip]

@Violeta
That's a homeopathic arsenic product you have linked to, meaning that there's no arsenic in it.

 

[Violeta]

Yes, that's the good part, you get the arsenite action without having to worry about it being poisonous.

 

[Hip]

Violeta, the discussion in this thread is a scientific one, so homeopathy and other mumbo jumbo has no place here. I appreciate you are just trying to be helpful, but you cannot replace arsenic with pure water and expect to get the same results.

 

[Violeta]

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you were looking for a way to get over chronic fatigue. Homeopathic 6X potassium arenate is made with potassium arsenate, btw.

 

[maryb]

@Hip
I really appreciate your knowledge and experience but homeopathic products can and do work for some. I was a true non-believer in homeopathy, I took a couple of drops of what is known as snake venom (can't remember the name) it caused my tongue to develop big blisters, this is the same symptom you would get if you'd had been bitten by the snake. Now I tried it several times to prove it was the product, it was, other products didn't produce this effect, do they work, I don't know but they are definitely not just water in my opinion. Not to de-rail the thread on this topic just to say if people want to try @Violeta's suggestion, go for it.

 

[Hip]

With acute promyelocytic leukemia, a form of cancer which arsenic trioxide is used to treat, if you follow @Violeta's suggestion you will die from this cancer, whereas taking arsenic trioxide will completely cure you.

So when it comes to cancer treatment, @Violeta's advice is not only wrong, it would be lethal to the patient.

Arsenic trioxide works by significantly increasing the production of toxic reactive oxygen species inside the cell, and that is the basis of its therapeutic effect.

 

[maryb]

Okay I admit I didn't read the thread I just saw the bit about homeopathy, point taken.

 

[Violeta]

With acute promyelocytic leukemia, a form of cancer which arsenic trioxide is used to treat, if you follow @Violeta's suggestion you will die from this cancer, whereas taking arsenic trioxide will completely cure you.

So when it comes to cancer treatment, @Violeta's advice is not only wrong, it would be lethal to the patient.

Arsenic trioxide works by significantly increasing the production of toxic reactive oxygen species inside the cell, and that is the basis of its therapeutic effect.

The thread started with this statement, "There's an article from 2004 about a vet who treated falcons diagnosed with CFS with Potassium Arsenite 0.05% leading to complete remission of symptoms in 97%." So the thread is about relieving chronic fatigue. Hip, if you don't like my addition to the thread, just ignore it. It's valid, and thank you to the original poster for bringing up the topic.

 

[Hip]

It's valid

Your suggestion that homeopathy could eradicate an intractable Staphylococcus bacteremia infection that even conventional antibiotics could not resolve is utter nonsense.

(The ME/CFS being discussed in this thread is an unusual type caused by Staphylococcus bacteremia).

 

[LifeIsSweet]

BUMP... I experiencing a severe flair up of CFS. Have been bed-bound for two weeks with horrible flu-like symptoms and the feeling as if I've been hit over the head with a frying pan. I feel as if I'm dying. At the onset of this particular flair up was a herpes I break-out AND impetigo. It is my gut feeling that I have a low-grade chronic staph infection throughout my entire body. Thanks to the research you guys have done, I'll have enough info to show my doctor, who is open to trying new treatments. If you've heard anything new about Staphylococcus Spp. and how it relates to CFS, I'd love to hear it.

 

[Violeta]

Find out specifically what the infection is. Herpes simplex is known to reactivate ebv, maybe get checked for viruses.

 

[Hip]

@LifeIsSweet
I don't think it is worth showing this to your doctor.

Staphylococcus bacteremia (blood infection)-associated ME/CFS seems incredibly rare. I have never come across human Staphylococcus-induced ME/CFS other than in the case of Dr Tarello and his wife.

If you want to show some ME/CFS treatments to your doctor, perhaps some of the treatments is this roadmap of chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) viral tests and treatments might be useful.

 

[Esther12]

Not read the thread, but 'Potassium Arsenite 0.05% Cures CFS in Falcons, so what about humans?' is an awesome title.

 

[Violeta]

@LifeIsSweet , you might want to try Berberine HCl. It covers so many bases, no dangerous side effects.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703418/

BBR has been shown to have significant antimicrobial activity against bacteria, fungi, parasites, worms, and viruses. In terms of bacteria, BBR has demonstrated highly significant activity against Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Salmonella, Klebsiella, Clostridium, Pseudomonas, Proteus, Shigella, Vibrio, and Cryptococcus species [43]. BBR also exhibited effectiveness in combating enterotoxigenic Escherichia colidiarrhea [44]. Moreover, BBR inhibited the overgrowth organisms such as staphylococci and coliforms, while having no effect on indigenous lactobacilli and bifidobacteria.

 

[Isabelle]

There are many excellent scientists with a background in veterinary science such as Dr. Peter Doherty (Nobel prize for medicine 1996 for research in immunology). In regards to these articles on supposed CFS in other species there are so many problems (red flags) that it is difficult to know where to start. CFS is a diagnosis of exclusion and the criteria referred to (CDC working case definition) apply to humans not other species. CFS and CFIDS are human diagnostic labels. Besides that, as any good vet or doctor will tell you, bacterial (Staph) septicaemia is treated with antibiotics, not arsenicals. Resistant strains of bacteria (e.g.MRSA) complicate this and hence the search for new antibiotics and restrictions on existing ones. Arsenicals are used to treat heartworm (Dirofilaria immitis) in dogs. Caparsolate (Thiacetarsamide Sodium) was used as an adulticide (kills adult worms), but superseded due to difficulty in administration and serious side effects that include death. The peer review system for journal publication clearly isn’t working.

http://www.cdc.gov/cfs/case-definition/1994.html

http://research.vet.upenn.edu/dvei/Pharmaceuticals/ThiacetarsamideSodium/tabid/7771/Default.aspx

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-0813.1974.tb02365.x/abstract

http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/Supplement_4/S231.full