This Is MS Multiple Sclerosis Community: Knowledge & Support

Really? "In conclusion, use of antibiotics active against C. pneumoniae was not associated with a decreased risk of short-term multiple sclerosis. The observed lower risk of multiple sclerosis for penicillin users needs to be confirmed in other populations."

What is short term multiple sclerosis?

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An Itinerary in Light and Shadow Completed Dr Charles Stratton / Dr David Wheldon abx regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years. Still improving with no relapses since starting. Can't run but can paint all day.

Sarah,

I just post the research. This doesn't seem a very robust piece of research. Unfortunately, this is the case with the majority of papers that are pubished.

Ian

Ian

I'm not with you this time. I think it was as good as most you see and came to a firm conclusion. But as always posed yet another question.
What is the significance of penicillin use 3 years prior to dx?

I think the reference to "short-term" MS was just bad English and what they were trying to say was "a risk of developing MS in the short-term < 3years".

This research is a challenge for the Abx protagonists but perhaps their get-out is the phrase "Overall antibiotic use" which is unlikely to have encompassed anyone with any regimen akin the DW's.

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John
I am what I am

Hmm, I don't read it like that John.

I am no expert here but I think this is saying if you have taken antibiotics for cpn before you get an attack (which leads to dx), this does not reduce the risk.

Is that like saying those taking aspirin before a headache did not have a reduced risk of headache?

I am thinking here that something triggers the MS into action, so perhaps the cpn are latent, if indeed they are the cause.

Research after diagnosis is what is needed to support or disprove abx, but as there is no money to be made, this is not likely to happen.

If you are familiar with the Vanderbilt findings you would know that Chlamydia pneumoniae (Cpn), the implicated organism is not killable by single antibiotic use. The particular agent used in this study (no matter how long or short it was used) only kills one form of Cpn-- the Elementary Body which is the infectious, spore-like form. If Cpn has already infected nerve cells, or there is enough EB's left after brief penicillan treatment to continue to infect nerve cells, then any use of a single agent is useless.

Once the EB enters a host cell it transforms into the replicating form, called and Reticulate Bodies. These are inhibited and eventually killed by more usual abx like doxycycline and azithromycin, usually used continuously and in combination (to prevent developing resistance). Some of the RB''s will convert to a cryptic, persistent, low metabolizing form which is not effected by regular antibiotics. They are only killed by metronidazole (Flagyl) and related agents.

Like many of the studies which "prove" that "antibiotics don't work" in a disease in which Cpn is implicated (MS, cardiovascular disease, chronic fatigue, irritable bowel, wet macular degeneration, etc), they are ignorant of the persistence issue and the multiple antibiotic protocol which must be used to actually get rid of the infection, as well as the long time period of treatment to reach all forms in all the infected tissues.

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On Wheldon/Stratton protocal since December '04 for non-MS Cpn: CFS/FMS
Ohio, USA
www.CPn Help.org

This study, though, isn't even addressing whether abx work in multiple sclerosis, but what reduces the chance of getting the disease if taken up to three years before hand. Okay, I developed the disease at 24 and the only antibiotic I had taken prior to that was penicillin, but at the age of 7, obviously way to long ago to count. However, even in this old paper, by Yechiel Becker from Jerusalem, when CPn was only recently discovered to be a pathogen in the mid eighties, and what was most effective had not been fully decided, penicillin was known to be of no use:


http://gsbs.utmb.edu/microbook/ch039.htm

I guess the use of the phrase "short term multiple sclerosis" was simply due to the fact that the authors of the study posted by Bromley are Spanish spoken to judge by their names, and didn't have a very good proof reader.

Sarah

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An Itinerary in Light and Shadow Completed Dr Charles Stratton / Dr David Wheldon abx regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years. Still improving with no relapses since starting. Can't run but can paint all day.

Not being able to access the full article, I have a lot of observations and questions. From the summary, it appears the authors found a group of MS patients, then reviewed their medical history for three years' time prior to diagnosis? Just from my experience with antibiotic prescriptions in the DECADES prior to my disease onset, we are talking about five or ten day runs of various antibiotics. With what we now know of the three life-phases of cpn, why on earth would anyone expect a short burst of abx to affect cpn infection, therefore MS?

Case in point; I have taken various short courses of antibiotics here and there in my lifetime, yet I developed MS. Now that I've done the proper protocol in a long-term regimen, nearly all my MS symptoms have disappeared and the minimal remainder has lessened to almost nothing.
One antibiotic did not accomplish this. A course of a week of multi-antibiotic therapy did not accomplish this. Only the PROPER protocol and length of time accomplished this. (An analogy would be prescribing ONE small pill of penicillin for a particular sexually transmitted disease. It's not the right dose or duration and it does not kill the disease. The right dose and duration of treatment WILL kill the disease.)

I'd need to read the entire content of this retroactively-built study to understand what its importance really might be. Doesn't sound like it applies to what we are doing, in the slightest.

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The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems. Mohandas Gandhi

I shouldn't bother reading the whole thing: life is too short. I think it was done merely to be part of the group that simply can't believe that MS has an infective cause. Even if someone does take an antibiotic active against chlamydia pneumoniae in the three years before developing the disease, it won't have been sufficient to kill all of the organism in chronic form and certainly won't have conferred immunity.

How many people never took antibiotics at all before developing the disease? I had five days of penicillin when I was seven and had come down with scarlet fever, then one lot of something else for an infected bite after developing the disease. That's all until I started on my current regime three years ago. I was never a sickly child. Within hours of taking my first dose of doxycycline, my MS being so active at the time, I felt something strange and indefinable happening. I hadn't been tested for CPn at this point, but if I was carrying nothing that doxycycline is effective against, I shouldn't have been affected at all.

Sarah

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An Itinerary in Light and Shadow Completed Dr Charles Stratton / Dr David Wheldon abx regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years. Still improving with no relapses since starting. Can't run but can paint all day.