Gibbledygook's antibiotic log

[gibbledygook]

I have not been taking very much LDN as it made my leg and hand so stiff.
I continue to take minocycline and roxithromycin daily and am awaiting the arrival of the prescriptions so kindly written out by David Wheldon whom I visited in Bedford.
Today I walked 800 metres non-stop with hardly a wobble. AND I had drunk far too much and smoked too many cigarettes the night before. Previously if I had attempted walking on a hangover I would only get approx 500 metres before my knee would begin to buckle.

Maybe it's the sunshine.

[Daunted]

I have not been taking very much LDN as it made my leg and hand so stiff.
I continue to take minocycline and roxithromycin daily and am awaiting the arrival of the prescriptions so kindly written out by David Wheldon whom I visited in Bedford.
Today I walked 800 metres non-stop with hardly a wobble. AND I had drunk far too much and smoked too many cigarettes the night before. Previously if I had attempted walking on a hangover I would only get approx 500 metres before my knee would begin to buckle.

Maybe it's the sunshine.

Interesting, thanks for updating us. I haven't had impressive improvement yet, indeed, if anything, a worsening of my spasticity, but it's very early yet. (2 months).

I did a reckless experiment two days ago and took Flagyl in the morning, and drank that night (about 11 hours later). I had no problems.

[gibbledygook]

I started taking UK sourced and prescribed doxicycline 2 days ago but am still waiting for roxithromycin to arrive from the Continent. It was much quicker ordering and receiving the antibiotics from the internet but since they are of uncertain provenance David Wheldon kindly wrote out UK prescriptions for the same antibiotics.

I have now been on doxicycline and roxithromycin since March 20. Nothing very dramatic has happened but I have Definitely stopped progressing. I was also out last night for quite an alcoholic evening and my partner says I walked up the stairs far more easily than I have in the past on similar levels of wine. I was also wearing boots with quite high heels and I never thought I would wear them again. Still I didn't do much walking so maybe it's just wishful thinking.

I stopped taking low dose naltrexone about 3 weeks after starting it as it made my walking much harder though it greatly enhanced my mood.

I'm going to stick just to antibiotics and avonex for the time being as I have a feeling there's something in this antibiotic theory.

[SarahLonglands]

Hello Alex,

Well done you - I haven't dare wear anything remotely resembling high heels for years, never mind how much or how little walking was involved. This doesn't particularly bother me because I am quite tall, I am just looking forward to be able to keep going for longer!

Take care,

Sarah

[gibbledygook]

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for having shared your experience on antibiotics around - I was a bit sceptical at first but I really think that it is the antibiotics which have stopped me progressing.
I wonder whether chlamydia pneumonia attacks people who smoke since there seems to be a fairly high correlation between smoking and incidence of ms...I guess if the lungs are weakened by tobacco then bacteria have an easier time proliferating. Mmm.

Hope the wine was good!

[Daunted]

I wonder whether chlamydia pneumonia attacks people who smoke since there seems to be a fairly high correlation between smoking and incidence of ms...I guess if the lungs are weakened by tobacco then bacteria have an easier time proliferating. Mmm.

Hope the wine was good!

From emedicine:

C pneumoniae is more common in males (60-90%) than in females; this difference is possibly due to cigarette smoking.

[gibbledygook]

From emedicine:

C pneumoniae is more common in males (60-90%) than in females; this difference is possibly due to cigarette smoking.[/quote]

Fantastic instant corroboration of my theory! Thank you! I will continue hunting around for info on this connection.

[SarahLonglands]

Hi Alex,

The wine was excellent, thankyou very much!

As for smoking, this is something I have never done. Well, slight untruth: I did try half a menthol cigarette whilst at school, but I didn't like it.

Daunted is correct in saying that CPn is more common in men, and I think more men smoke, not so sure these days, but the real damage occurs in places other than the lungs: the CNS with MS, the arterial system with coronary artery disease, the intestines with Crohn's disease and so on. Basically, most people will encounter CPn somewhere along the line, some will manage to clear it but some won't manage to. Then the damage starts depending on that particular person's genetic propensity. More men than women die from coronary artery disease when they are only in their fifties, yet I know people who have been treated for chronic CPn infection who end up with the pulse and blood pressure of a healthy twenty year old. I also know that one of these people still smokes but only a very small amount.

(You beat me to it here, but I won't change anything!)
.

[gibbledygook]

I just found the following article in PubMed re smoking and chlamydial infections. I have a nasty feeling that I'm not allowed to quote the piece wholesale so I have edited the details out but maintained the conclusions...

Microb Pathog. 2004 Sep;37(3):141-8. Related Articles, Links


Tobacco smoke induces persistent infection of Chlamydophila pneumoniae in HEp-2 cells.

Wiedeman JA, Kaul R, Heuer LS, Thao NN, Pinkerton KE, Wenman WM.

Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of California Davis, 2516 Stockton Blvd, Sacramento, CA 95618, USA.

We examined tobacco smoke exposure and its effect on the life cycle of Chlamydophila pneumoniae (C. pneumoniae) in HEp-2, a human respiratory epithelial cell line.... Thus, using this novel system, we were able to induce chlamydial persistence. Tobacco smoke exposure may represent a risk for establishment of a chronic reservoir of C. pneumoniae infection within respiratory epithelium.

PMID: 15351037 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

[Daunted]

Yes but this does not explain...why MS is much more prevalent in women, since men do most of the smoking!

(Supposedly).

[gibbledygook]

The following is from the office of national stats. However I rather agree that the higher incidence of MS in women and the chlamydia pneumoniae, smoking link is probably rather tenuous.

"More girls than boys smoke but the sex difference is reversed in young adulthood

Teenage girls are more likely to smoke than teenage boys (Figure 5). For example, 14 year-old girls are nearly twice as likely to smoke cigarettes (24%) as 14 year-old boys (13%) (ONS, 1997b). In the 16-19 year-old age group 32% of women and 26% of men smoke cigarettes. It should be noted, however, that this trend is reversed in the 20-24 year-old age group, with 43% of men smoking cigarettes compared with 36% of women (ONS, 1997a)."

Figure 5: Smoking prevalence among children and young adults (ONS, 1997a)

[gibbledygook]

This is a rant about the apparent huge inefficiencies in European health provision. I put my prescription for all the antibiotics in on the 17th March and I have today (8th April) been informed that the French company will be able to deliver the pills at the earliest by the 15th April. How can it take a New Zealand internet company 2 weeks to deliver antibiotics from Fiji to a UK resident but a French company takes 4 weeks or more? It's just ridiculous. Are there civil servants involved? Are they on strike?

Anyway I do think that the pills I received from the internet, apart from arriving relatively swiftly compared with our European neighbours, are effective since I am finally in remission and possibly getting a bit better. Until I started taking the internet antibiotics I believe I was progressing even on minocycline alone. Still I'm quite keen to find out if the internet antibiotics have any real medicinal value or whether it's a grand placebo effect and was wondering if anyone knew where I could have the pills tested in Europe, preferably London. Does anyone know?

[SarahLonglands]

In reply, I always get my prescription from Boots and normally within the week, except for once, about a year ago, when it was slightly delayed due to 'supply difficulties' and this time round, funnily enough. Because I know they are coming from France, I keep a few weeks in hand, just in case.

Being married to a microbiologist I know that if you get 'Rulid' from Aventis France, you are getting the original drug, and from the company who developed it. If what you get from New Zealand is 'Rulid', there is no problem as long as they are not out of date. If another name, they might be perfectly okay, but sometimes third world drugs are not up to standard, as with lots of things. They won't be completely ineffective, though, hey might be just not so finely ground, so you don't absorb quite so much. I don't know where you can get them tested, but Aventis France are not usually very behind, in fact they seem to have got faster over the months in supplying to this country, because the demand has increased so much over the last eighteen months.

You can take the minocycline or doxycycline by themselves, but in the long run it is better to take them synergically.

Sarah

[gibbledygook]

Thank you, Sarah.

I will be patient. I am guilty of seeing many things continental in a jaundiced way!

[gibbledygook]

I decided to bite the bullet and start a "pulse" of metronizadole since I have been on the doxicycline and roxithromycin for several weeks and I wanted to complete a course before going away.
Some of my symptoms appear to be slightly worse notably the L'hermitte type sign I have in my kidney area and my walking is a bit harder. My mood also disintegrated first thing this morning when I started inexplicably crying over a movie I had seen last night! Weird. Weird. Weird. I hope this is all par for the course.