Could this be Babesia ??? microscopy+ Bart content

darkfield is more for ketes and live analysis. it is way more contrasty ... for babs n bart one must use stain which is viewable by regular ol brightfield...now for the record when i got to borrow a a japonese scope it was much clearer and more definitive for sure ...

Thank you bluelyme and garzie.
Very interesting!

Yep.
Babs easiest

bart possible - But tricky unless high numbers.

Erlichia. Doable. But tricky. As is inside white blood cells which stain purple too.

TBRF may present with more spirochetes in the blood so possible - easier with darkfield.

Other protozoan / pyroplasts / apicomplexans. Possible.

Nematodes etc. Huge by comparison. So relatively easy.


In all cases though it takes some work and skill to distinguish them from other artefacts in the blood.

OK so i have had a bit of a breakthrough and wanted to update you.

i was watching after watching this excellent video by Galaxy labs with Ed Breischwedts and Dr M

“Understanding Bartonella – Edited” - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njywmmpjiku

about half way through - ( 45mins 30s ) Dr M put up this stained blood smear slide from a bartonella patient - and described the clumped together collection of RBC all with pale vacuoles inside them, in roughly ring shaped formations around the inner edge and all stuck together with a sticky v faintly stained biofilm or fibrin material.

link to a snapshot of the slide here: https://ibb.co/kcpxg4k

and i am thinking - "that looks very familiar ......."

I had seen exactly this formation in one of my own stained slides – but had dismissed it as some kind of artefact of the smear and staining process because
• I wasn’t expecting to see clumps of cells with bart in them – as was told to expect only the odd infected cell here and there - not many of them clumped together
• Was looking for stained items - whereas these are clear vacuoles with no stain
• I hadn’t noticed the very faintly stained biofilm in my slides but on closer inspection I think it is there - and in any case something must be holding all these red blood cells with vacuoles inside them together or they would have dispersed through the blood stream.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an image saved of the wide view that was exactly like the above – but do have the following images where the rings of pale vacuoles inside the cells can be very clearly seen and suggestion of cytoplasm around the red blood cell can be seen as a fuzzy clear zone around each RBC that is approx 1/5th of a RBC width.

link to an annotated version pointing these features out can be found here:
https://ibb.co/zzgqqzn

I feel this is the clearest evidence yet of a bart infection – characterised by clumps of rbc all with clear vacuoles in clear ring formations around the inner edge of the rbc and stuck together biofilm type material.

i think this new manifestation of bart - described by the foremost Bart clinician - but not mentioned in the Schaller book - gives us a new and useful target for Bart diagnosis by DIY microscopy and given that its so unmistakable - make home microscopy of much higher diagnostic value than we thought.

( final note to help manage expectations - i think i had looked at around 12 slides before seeing this so - you may also need to look at 10-20 - so don't expect the first one you look at to show up with this)

Hi Garzie,

Thank you for the updates !!
Lumbrokinase really made an impact for me in that regard.
I recently added Bactrim on top of that, but I kind of feel like Lumbrokinase is doing the heavy lifting here.
It's very impressive how strong it is.
I haven't noticed any gut issues with it, but I should add that I never really have gut issues.
And yes, it's very insightful that the Bartonella just floats around like that with a protocol like that.
I think your conclusion is accurate too.
Please keep us posted!

Hi dcd,

sorry to hear of your ongoing painful ytroubles - i wish i could help more

i am using Giemsa stain - its the classic stain for doing most blood smears

i could not find giemsa ready made - so bought the stain as a powder from a UK ebay source - and had to dissolve it and filter it and its supposed to be mixed with glycerine - i think to stop any of it settling out - so its a bit of a faff

i followed mainly the guides that the WHO have for giemsa stain prep and slide staining - can link to those https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/htm-gmp-mm-sop-07a

briefly - the steps and materials for the actual staining are
1, smear slide - need ground edge slide for the spreader slide - as it must be perfectly straight edged
2, allow to dry
3, fix with methanol - 97% ethanol seemed to work fine
4, apply stain for set time - i used 4 mins
5, rinse with buffered pH7.2 water for set time(i used distilled water +1/1000 Potassium carbonate)
6, allow to dry
7, view

in my proof of concept trials i didn't buy methanol either - i had 97% ethanol here for tincturing - and read that it could be acceptable in a pinch in field microscopy for malaria - so i used that and it seemed to work ok - i don't know if iso-propanol would work - you would have to try it - if not you can but methanol reasonably cheapy on eBay.

i think blue lyme linked to a single step rapid stain that seemed to give good results and can be purchased ready made from i think lab supply or vet supply places - he gave a source i think on the other thread

for 1000x microscopy you will need a 100x oil immersion type objective and immersion oil - again i used ebay

let me know if i can help in any way

A lot of kits come w a “buffer”. Do I add that to the water? Is this step critical, can I just use distilled water?

I have just been looking at some of my previous slides i kept. Unfortunately i think i binned what i thought was a bad slide that the above photos came from.

But i have found more very clear biofilm examples now that i am looking for it.

Will post images in a bit.

Thanks Garzie!

Very interesting.
A few questions:

"Large biofilm mass with disrupted RBC’s in thick pink gel like substance 40x"

What do you think the pink gel like substance is?

"WBC attacking the Biofilm"

Is that the WBC embedded into the biofilm?

The last picture is really clear in what it shows! That's a really great one (and so are the others).

It must be really frustrating to see all of this in only 0.5ml of blood. I mean this not in a negative way and I hope you don't take it the wrong way, but it makes me rethink the herbal route.

That said, the herbs have greatly improved your well-being (50% or more), so it must have killed a lot already. But I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to see the prevalence of bacteria/biofilms still.

I just feel like we are up against something that's really, how do I say it, .... really destructive and stubborn..

ref WBC's with giemsa - they typically stain a vivid kind of magenta purple colour within some pale blue outer circle and around 3x the size of a red blood cell - here i think they are partially obscured by the semi transparent biofilm/gel - but i have put arrows to what looks likely to be WBC's to me

https://postimg.cc/r0pny9g7

i have seen a general trend towards far more WBC in and around the biofilm segments of the slide than in the unaffected areas - again indicating something within the biofilm / fibrin deposits is triggering the WBC's - possibly bacterial remnants

Garzie said...
Yep.
Babs easiest

bart possible - But tricky unless high numbers.

Erlichia. Doable. But tricky. As is inside white blood cells which stain purple too.

TBRF may present with more spirochetes in the blood so possible - easier with darkfield.

Other protozoan / pyroplasts / apicomplexans. Possible.

Nematodes etc. Huge by comparison. So relatively easy.


In all cases though it takes some work and skill to distinguish them from other artefacts in the blood.

Is mycoplasma spottable under microscope? Interested in this after reading The New Arthritis Breakthrough. He thinks myco is often behind these arthritises. I also noticed IgeneX won’t test for myco, how do people get tested for this?

He also claims strep can do it, and I did have strep throat in 2013 right before the first head symptoms began, but my ASO titers are negative (like 100 if I remember, cutoff is 200).

Interesting how many different infections are out there that can wreak havoc

I think I’m going to have to wait for the IVIG to kick in to suppress the neuropathy and make it bearable first, and then just bite the bullet and start a low-dose antibiotic regimen again, probably Minocycline, and see what happens. Afraid the flare will put me in a headlock until I tap out tho. Would be interesting to see what happens to my ANA

Today the SI joint pain is unbearable, can’t stand for any amount of time. This is untenable

After reading schallers pdf I agree, your slides don’t look like babesia.

I was unclear how to tell the difference between a reticulocyte and babesia tho. When I Google images if reticulocyte it looks just like babesia, and he kind of glosses over that. Should have spent some time on that given they look so similar. I also couldn’t see the cytoplasm around some of the babesia dots he was mentioning. Otherwise great document.

I guess won’t matter for me unless I spy some of these structures

Agreed re: his argument about using the overall picture to make an informed call, vs any single cell. It's just that, based on what i see in images online, the reticulocytes basically can take a similar "babesia form" as babesia, making it kind of hard to tell. He implies that theyre usually straight lines inside the cell, but even this one on wikipedia looks kinda like a babesia form w/ the semi-circle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/reticulocyte#/media/file:reticulocytes_human_blood_supravital_stain.jpg

If one had a blood disorder and were forming lots of reticulocytes, seems like it would be hard to tell. But i guess there's enough babesia forms that you could eventually figure it out by looking at enough of the cells, there's a subtle difference that should eventually become clearer the more you look at.

Very awesome re Nikon eyepiece! Cant wait to see the new slides!