Disulfiram - Part 13

I’ll be starting soon. Staying on Septra to keep on the bartonella. Will be using enteric coated capsules, 32.5 mg every other day for first two weeks. Then daily for two more weeks. And I’m guessing stepping up from there.

I had started a DSF topic a few weeks ago titled "My turn... " but might as well merge in here to keep the topic fresh.

Started slow last week with a 1/4 dose on Sun, Tuesday and Friday. Then started full time 1/4 dose on Sunday and plan to stay at 1/4 daily for rest of the week, then ramp up 1/4 pill each of the following weeks.

I'll post my progress as I go. I don't expect much of a major herx since I've been at 90% or so for a while. I did notice some lower back pain and stiffness middle of last week, but that has passed.

later

I wonder a lot about what a sufficient dosage is for me, too RainyCloud. I haven't noticed any reports from patients post DSF who were on a low dose for an extended period of time (6+ mo.). Might take a few more months before some of these patients finish treatment. I posted this study in the fb group recently, just trying to get an update on others opinions as it was circulating the group months ago...

https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/source/hsdb/3317
From section 4.2:

"After a single oral dose of 50, 100, 200, or 400 mg/kg, disulfiram was found in dose-dependent quantities in blood, liver, kidney, spleen, brain, muscle, and peri-epididymal adipose tissue of rats. After a 2-mo treatment, accumulation was not dose-dependent, suggesting a saturation point for various organs."

De Saint-Blanquat G et al; Eur J Drug Metab Pharmacokinet 3 (4): 205-9 (1978)

In a previous post, someone estimated that lowest dose evaluated for saturation would equal approx. 375mg for a 200lb person. Really needs to be done with non-human primates instead of rats though. I assume the parts of the body that would reach saturation first (and reach it at a lower dose) would be the parts that are high in lipid content.

One group member commented about how it's actually the metabolites that are sticking around in the body for so long, and they could play a major role in the antimicrobial effect of the parent drug. That would make the measurements from this study less important. We do know however, according to Dr. Rajadas, that the parent drug (disulfiram) is borreliacidal.

Another group member commented: "My personal experience has been that 125mg/day was an insufficient dose. When I accidentally lowered my dose for 10 days, my symptoms increased. Returning to my normal dose of 375mg resulted in a herx reaction. I have been seeing reliable progress at 375mg, indicating that may be an effective dose for me."

Post Edited (potsnpans) : 2/5/2020 10:01:07 AM (GMT-7)

Someone somewhere mentioned DSF getting "stuck in the nerves" which are also highly lipidy (new word?). This could be part of the problem facing patients who experience neuropathic symptoms months after stopping DSF.

Yeah we can't be sure really. Translating dosages from rats to humans can't be done very accurately. If we assume the translations are accurate though, then it would seem taking 375 mg daily for 2 months would "saturate blood, liver, kidney, spleen, brain, muscle, and peri-epididymal adipose tissue" just as well as 3000 mg daily for 2 months.

Someone needs to go to their local pet store, get some rats, and do this experiment again with lower doses. I will supply the DSF...

Thank you again potsnpans, it means a lot to me.

Did you see this book I uploaded a while ago? I got it from Amazon and converted it to pdf.

It has some information about disulfiram besides the alcoholism aspect.

https://www.docdroid.net/qczklhc/disulfiram-its-use-in-alcohol-dependence-avinash-de-sousa.pdf

Do you if the saturation is based on a certain threshold?
What I mean to say is, let's say an organ isn't fully saturated, does that mean there are places completely untouched by disulfiram or does that just mean the amount of disulfiram in that organ isn't at a certain range?

RainyCloud - be careful !!

RainyCloud: I saved the book to my computer the last time you posted it. I looked at some of the sections that were of interest to me back then and I kind of forgot about it. I need to check it out again..

Somebody said...
"Do you if the saturation is based on a certain threshold?
What I mean to say is, let's say an organ isn't fully saturated, does that mean there are places completely untouched by disulfiram or does that just mean the amount of disulfiram in that organ isn't at a certain range?"

Like it would accumulate in one part of the body ONLY after another part is fully saturated? I don't think this would be the case but I'm no expert. I think they just used the term "saturation" in the study to acknowledge that the organs or tissues they tested were not accumulating any more of the drug when the rats were given more. The drug is distributed throughout the body via the blood. It probably does accumulate in higher concentrations in some areas but I don't think this would be dependent on the saturation of other areas.

Alright Girlie, back to 250mg tomorrow.
That weird feeling of being completely spaced out started to very slowly creep up on me today.
Just a bit though, but enough for me to seize this dosage.

I know it's because of the Adderall that I'm on. The two medications (adderall + disulfiram) don't mix well.
They both increase dopamine and it guess that's where it messes things up for me.

Alternatively, I might stay on the 375 dosage tomorrow but skip a day of Adderall (or a lower dosage of adderall).
Just to see how that goes. It will be something I need to decide tomorrow.

Glad I caught it in time this time.
Thank you for your concern.

Wow, it's good you were able to recognize that, RainyCloud. I think Dr. K has had success with his patients maxing out at 250 mg, and there are many in the FB group who only go that high. The weight of the patient is definitely a factor there.

I think 250 will be my max dose if my liver allows it. I was planning on staying at a much lower dose long term, hoping that more info would eventually come out about what a sufficient dose really is... but I don't want to be on this indefinitely anymore... and with this latest flare in babesia symptoms, I think I should be taking more. If I get to 250 and still feel I'm not overcoming the babesia, I might switch back to regular, non-enteric DSF and see what that does.

Quin said...
What I noticed was that after I stopped taking disulfiram, I would feel the disulfiram effects again when I lost weight. So it seems to be stored in fat.

Also, I did not take such a high dose. This happened after taking 50 mg per day.

Quin,
Did you ever ramp up your dose from 50mg per day, or did you stop taking it altogether? Did you find it intolerable or what? Was the herx too intense?