Bart strain

Is there a certain strain of Bart that's harder to get rid if? I have Bart Hensley not sure what everyone else has but I noticed loads of people on abx for few years with some good progress and some who say barely any progress at all and said it's so hard to get rid of? Which abx or herbs worked in combo specifically for bart henslae?I'm wondering more about abx.

Post Edited (MedicalNerd) : 10/29/2022 9:19:04 PM (GMT-7)

Quin said...
DNAConnexions reported that I had baronella henselae, but I don't know how specific the PCR test is in distinguishing different strains.

My difficulty with it was it was resistant to various antibiotics, including rifampin, amoxicillin, cefdinir, and somewhat to azithromycin/clarithromycin (although this resistance decreased when multiple antibiotics were combined).

I ended up treating it mostly successfully with sodium valproate and minocycline. After getting rid of most of it, I had a few minor relapses, which I treated with the same combo, and occasionally atovaquone and azithromycin. This eventually got rid of all my symptoms.

Girlie treated it successfully with this

https://www.healingwell.com/community/default.aspx?f=30&m=4305790

That involved some high-risk (but effective) antibiotics.

It is certainly possible to eliminate the infection. A lot of people fail because either they use ineffective antibiotics, or they discontinue the antibiotics due to side effects.

Thanks, I want to look into sodium valproate because I haven't heard of it before. I was on doxy and seems it didn't even touch Bart or lyme.

i tried to hold the riffy zith combo but only lasted 9 months before my liver and adrenals had enough then did 9 months of zhang allicin hh2 combo with many more gains ... i did add 9 months plasma also rife fwiw . according to the internet im not even supposed to have bartonella baciliformis in this country...lol. i was even pondering gentimycin at the risk of hearing loss . just remember what ever you choose to take that they are double cell wall gram negative bacteria; so two effictive medicines are needed . and confirmed with my microscopy bart is very much intercellular so that makes name of the game : endurance . and the question: what can you tolerate for that long a treatment plan ?

the taxonomy of bacteria is like this :
Domain: Bacteria
Phylum: Pseudomonadota
Class: Alphaproteobacteria
Order: Hyphomicrobiales
Family: Bartonellaceae
Genus: Bartonella
Species: (for example Bartonella henselae)
Strain: ( eg Bartonella henselae Houston-1)

there are many bartonella species - approx half or more of which have been associated with disease in humans
B. acomydis
B. alsatica
B. ancashensis
"Candidatus B. antechini"
B. apis
B. australis
B. bacilliformis
"Candidatus B. bandicootii"
B. birtlesii
B. bovis
"Candidatus B. breitschwerdtii"
B. callosciuri
B. capreoli
B. chomelii
B. clarridgeiae
B. coopersplainsensis
B. doshiae
"Candidatus B. durdenii"
"Candidatus B. eldjazairii"
B. elizabethae
B. florencae
B. fuyuanensis
B. gabonensis
B. grahamii
B. heixiaziensis
B. henselae
B. jaculi
B. japonica
B. koehlerae
B. kosoyi
B. krasnovii
B. mastomydis
"Candidatus B. mayotimonensis"
"Candidatus B. melophagi"
"Candidatus B. merieuxii"
"Candidatus B. monaxi"
B. naantaliensis
"Candidatus B. ovis"
B. pachyuromydis
B. peromysci
B. phoceensis
B. queenslandensis
B. quintana
B. rattaustraliani
B. rattimassiliensis
B. rochalimae
"Candidatus B. rudakovii"
B. saheliensis
B. schoenbuchensis
B. senegalensis
B. silvatica
B. silvicola
B. talpae
B. tamiae
B. taylorii
"Candidatus B. thailandensis"
B. tribocorum
B. vinsonii
spp. arupensis
spp. berkhoffii
spp. vinsonii
spp. yucatanensis
"Candidatus B. volans"
B. washoensis
"Candidatus B. woyliei"

of these bartonella henselae is the most well known

the famous bartonella researcher Dr Roberto Maggi presented that there are something like 40+ common genotypes(or strains) of bartonella henselae and approx 45 different antigens are needed to be tested via serology to reliably detect all of these in human blood. which is one of the reasons for the low sensitivity of serologic tests for bartonella.

as far as i know there has been very little work on the virulence of different species or strains in humans

many species are historically associated with a specific animal host - eg cats and bart h -
Maggi has theorised that more severe illness in animals and humans is experienced when a host is infected with a non species associated type
as the immune system of that new host species ( eg humans in the case of Bart h ) is not adapted over evolutionary time - to deal with that pathogen.

similarly i have not seen anything systematic in terms of research to define what antibiotics work best for what species or strain. you will likely find case studies that document treatment of 1 or 2 persons and the outcomes. but nothing large scale that i know of.
Bart h is used as the default model organism in almost all of the in vitro trials that i know of - eg Zhang's work on Bart drugs

you almost never see species specific trials or drug comparisons in lyme drug research either - and that has approx 10x as much research on it vs bartonella.
in most cases in real world patients you do not know for sure which bartonella species or strain is in the patient in any case - this is usually the case with lyme also - and babesia ( 300 species in the wild apparently )

i see that Invisible international ( the educational and advocacy group for tick borne illnesses ) has started a project to try to gather robust data on effective treatments from 10 top LLMDs and their patients - which could in time start to shed some light on the topic

i have seen one study comparing the susceptibility of many wild type lyme strains to various antibiotics in vitro and was surprised to see quite wide variations in MIC as much as 10x in some cases

so this is likely also in effect in other organisms like bart also - which is perhaps one reason for their being an inevitable amount of trial and error involved in each individuals treatment, along with other factors - like individual immune system differences and host specific responses, general health of the individual, lifestyle factors like diet, sleep, exercise, stress management etc etc - which will all have an impact on how well a patient does on any given treatment or antibiotic regime

Post Edited (Garzie) : 10/29/2022 6:44:55 AM (GMT-7)

Yes, Garzie makes a good point. There isn't a perfect treatment for bartonella because there is variation in which antibiotics it is resistant to. We do have some some ideas of what it is often susceptible to (eg minocycline).

Occasionally people get lucky and are able to clear bartonella on the first try, but I was not so lucky and had to try a few different things.

bluelyme: Regarding azithromycin and rifampin, I found that this did not work. When I did successfully hit bart with other drugs, I got a pretty intense herx and improved after a few months. 9 months without significant improvement is way too long and in that case you should try something else.

Bluelyme’s point on endurance and tolerability of treatment is vital. Chronic Lyme treatment is a marathon. Choose a treatment you can hang with.

Quin said...
DNAConnexions reported that I had baronella henselae, but I don't know how specific the PCR test is in distinguishing different strains.
.

most PCR testing compares the highly variable 16s region of bacterial DNA with reference sequences in a registered database in order to identify bacteria

in general this method is said to be only able to identify reliably down to genus level - as below this the similarities between different species are to great to distinguish reliably.

a figure of approx. 60% accuracy / reliability in determining species correctly via this method is commonly used

its not clear what method DNA Connections actually uses to create its species specific results
in general they seem to be one of the labs that has less published validation data out there.

this is a problem with all private labs - as current legislation in most counties allows anyone to set up such a service - and bring a test to market direct to customers - with only minimal in house validation - which does not have to be published or validated by any 3rd party - and the rest is all marketing and polish.

these companies know that most punters do not know how to tell a good test from a poor one - and many people will often choose a test based on how many organisms it test for vs price - eg choose one that seems to test for most things the most cheaply. (i'm not saying that s what you did Quin)

so this promotes the launch of multi-pathogen multiplex tests marketed on value - and the detail of how the test actually performs for each species is then lost in the complexity of sensitivity and specificity for each species - which very few people/customers ever dig into.

bluelyme said...
i tried to hold the riffy zith combo but only lasted 9 months before my liver and adrenals had enough then did 9 months of zhang allicin hh2 combo with many more gains ... i did add 9 months plasma also rife fwiw . according to the internet im not even supposed to have bartonella baciliformis in this country...lol. i was even pondering gentimycin at the risk of hearing loss . just remember what ever you choose to take that they are double cell wall gram negative bacteria; so two effictive medicines are needed . and confirmed with my microscopy bart is very much intercellular so that makes name of the game : endurance . and the question: what can you tolerate for that long a treatment plan ?

Any herbs that kill intracellular bacteria ? Been wondering this

i also had v little improvement from 9 months of doxy - even with 3 months of azithro and rifampicin

tetracyclines are active for rickettsia - doxy, mino, etc - but that is in lab experiments in test tubes with a single bacteria present - and normally in logarithmic growth cultures.
this is the case for all known conventional antibiotics.

the issue may be that with multiple chronic infections and resulting immune system dysregulation - no one drug can treat all effectively - this is a common experience of many on this forum and others
so - it is perhaps more useful to consider effective treatment as treating the overall patient - as opposed to just viewing the human body as a test tube with bacteria in it.

such an effective treatment will likely have to go in stages - and incorporate several / many different modalities

doxy may still be a useful place to start - as part of an overall treatment program - as many people who have been ill for many years cannot tolerate jumping right in with a protocol designed to eradicate all infections at once

its more of a journey - that we have to navigate - often just one step at a time - as opposed to just a single step process - like "take this abx combo for 6 weeks and you are done".

buhner list many herbs for bartonella, chlamydia, rickettsia etc - all are intracellular bacteria
he lists the studies supporting these in his books