Bartonella diagnoses

For those who tested positive for Bartonella through igenex, which species of bartonella did you test positive for. I tested positive for Bartonella Elizabethae along with lyme. However, I read a study saying that 50% of the normal population tested positive for Bartonella elizabethae antibodies. My question is do I actually have bartonella? I have neuropsychological symptoms such as depersonilaztion which I hear is common for bartonella. I know the most common species are the henselae and Quintana but does elizabethae cause any disease in humans?

this topic goes pretty deep

serology was pretty much all we had until recently and is still a mainstay of infectious disease testing.
but our immune systems have memory which means they typically hold some antibodies to just about every pathogen we have ever encountered.

so then it becomes down to degrees of antibody response, and types of antibody as a means of trying to interpret the results. there are various issues with doing this.

bart is hard to test for full stop - even the best test on the market - Galaxy's latest method - multiple blood draws, culture in special medium, then parallel droplet PCR - only claims to be 50% sensitive according to their published work - and most other test houses use older technology which is lagging well behind.

clinical diagnosis is still probably the most reliable - but not easy
the best place to start i think is Burrascano's 2008 guidelines

https://lymediseaseassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/burrguide200810.pdf

if after reviewing that you are still unsure - i would do wither a therapeutic trial of a bart abx combo - or shell out for the galaxy test.

WalkingbyFaith said...
bro123,

Just wanted to point out the Burrascano guidelines that Garzie linked are very old. He talks about Levofloxin being the preferred treatment and other floxins. Those drugs are not used much anymore because of the risk of patients getting “floxed.” Dr. RM in MD has been and is involved in research on bartonella in conjunction with Galaxy labs and is considered to be at the current cutting edge of bartonella treatment.

yep - fair point - bit old in terms of preferred drugs - but i still thing its one of the best guides in terms of trying to unpick the clinical picture of co-infections vs Lyme and has a wealth of information that is all to often overlooked.

i still link people to it - because i have not found anything so useful as a single condensed resource that is more recent.