Scott1 wrote:Hi,
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The Avonex manufacturers note does not proclaim they know what causes MS but you would have to assume they say there is efficacy because it is antiviral.
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Hi,
it is quite strange that they always talk about a viral cause.
A century ago there were millions of people infected with syphilis, which is a bacterial disease. Many of those with late stage neurosyphilis (with the causal bacterium Treponema pallidum in their CNS) had symptoms similar to MS. This shows that bacteria, especially spirochetes, might be the cause of MS!
In the early 1980s the cause of "Lyme", transmitted by ticks, was discovered by Willy Burgdorfer: another spirochete, which was named after him: Borrelia burgdorferi.
This bacterium is quite similar to T.pallidum, which causes syphilis, including the late stage neurospirochetosis. This of course is called (late CNS)
neuroborreliosis. ("Lyme" is age old, has been known in Europe for at least 150 years. It was even known that it could be cured with penicillin, which indicates that it is a bacterial disease, since penicillin is without effect in viral diseases.)
Now consider this:
-- You may be infected with this tick borreliosis without remembering a tick bite or any early symptoms. This could have been in childhood, either not recognised at all or long forgotten.
-- This (always) chronic infection normally remains silent / latent for years, even decades, as long as your immune system is in good shape, capable to keep the "bugs" under control. But once your immune system becomes impaired, i.e. under massive stress (cortisol going up, which suppresses the immune system) the borrelia may multiply and cause a myriad of possible disorders in many organs, prominently in the nervous system, including optic neuritis. Headaches are very common, as is fatigue, depression, paresthesias (numbness etc., muscle aches...), almost everything you might think of.
Therefore this disease is called the "new great imitator" - the old one was chronic syphilis.
Penicillin is effective in "Lyme", but doxycycline from the tetracycline group of abx is better:
2-3 weeks of cheap doxy is the standard therapy for "Lyme" (2-3x 100 mg per day).
But it is difficult to cure late neuroborreliosis permanently: in the CNS, behind the blood brain barrier (BBB) the spirochetes are not easily eliminated and may cause problems over decades, varying in time and space...
What seems to be littel recognised: late CNS neuroborreliosis clinically is indistinguishable from MS! Thererfore MS might well be a special, severe form of late neuroborreliosis. (MS has an undisputed genetic = hereditary predisposition: this could include an impaired immune defence aganist B.burgdorferi, impaired antibody production, so the borreliae might more easily reach the CNS and stay there indefinitely, if not cured.)
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All this (normally) is not told you by neurologists. According to guidelines they do a few standard borreliosis tests, which typically turn out to be "negative" (possibly because of impaired immune defence against B.burgdorferi, see above) and
assume that you cannot have chronic neuroborreliosis. (
This is wishful thinking: those routine test are unable to reliably exclude chronic B.burgdorferi infection.)
When I had my first MS(-like) symptoms in the early 1990s (under massive, continuous stress) I remembered my many tick bites since childhood - but I was "seronegative" on repeated testing (including "negative" twice in CSF = cerobrospinal fluid). I always thought that I nevertheless might have chronic / late neuroborreliosis:
In 1993 I had a series of a recommended AB for late tick borreliosis / neuroborreliosis, ceftriaxone i.v., and already during the series my headache and some other sensory symptoms (which started with the severe stress) were diminished or gone - but unfortunately slowly reappeared over the following months.
This is a very well-known problem in late neuroborreliosis, which is very hard to cure (see above).
Early in 1996 I tried oral doxycyclin - and had a positive reaction which would not disappear over time. But I had the impression that I was not really cured, therefore started "pulsing" in the second half of the 1990s, that is taking doxycycline for just tow days per month. (I am an MD, pharmacologist, and know a lot about abx, chronic infections and some tricks to keep them under permanent control.)
In my case this strategy has worked over more than 15 years by now (with just ca. 100x 100 mg doxy PER YEAR, altogether less than 200 g over 2 decades): I am without impairment / disability, close to what could be called a healthy state.
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I want to draw attention to a successful MS therapy study which seems to be completely ignored (possibly because it is from Iran?):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmid/24250865/
Medical pactice in Iran has a high standard: we really should not ignore this study. Especially since it is a duplication of a 2008 US study (but now with more MS patients and for a longer time):
http://archneur.jamanetwork.com/article ... eid=795219
In both studies just 100 mg/d of doxy were addet to an interferon beta-1a therapy, i.e. Avonex.
The authors of both studies are not talking about an antimicrobial action (but who knows? see above) but of some immun(omodulary) effects of this class of abx, poorly understood...
"...There is growing interest in combination therapy in patients with MS to stabilize the clinical course, reduce the rate of clinical relapses, and decelerate the progressive course of the underlying pathologic mechanism.25 The scientific rationale behind the concept of combination therapy in MS is to block different pathogenic pathways by applying different agents with dissimilar mechanisms of action, which translates into additive or synergistic therapeutic effects. ..." That is reasonable, isn't it?
You might think about adding doxy to your Avonex therapy (perhaps get a prescription from your GP? -- print those two papers and show them to your neurologist...?).
I have been in good shape on a minimum amount of doxy
alone (see above) for almost 20 years by now (but no neurologist wants to know - I have tried time and again!). They also do not want to know about this book, written by an eminent specialist on MS, Prof. Gabriel Steiner (1883-1965) at the end of his decade-long research in 1962 (written in German, because G.Steiner was born in Ulm / Germany, like A.Einstein, was a Jew like Einstein and emigrated to the US in the 1930s like Einstein - but unlike Einstein had no Nobel Prize, was not famous -- but simply forgotton to this day):
http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2 ... 42-87571-7
If you
scroll down on this SPRINGER page to the chapter "Die Spirochaeta myelophthora", click on "Look inside" there and go to the second page offered for preview (p.37 of the book) you see 4x4 = 16 micrographs showing spirochetes in active MS lesions in the CNS.
Later on in the book they were classified as borreliae, 1962(!), 2 decades before W.Burgdorfer detected borreliae in the ticks he had collected: could this be chance?
I personally am convinced that the cause of MS has been "known" / documented in the scientific literature for many decades - but simply ignored / forgotten.
chenman