Garzie said...
OK - happy to add what i have learned in my own journey into the world of microscopy and teaching myself how to interpret what is seen down the microscope.
the first thing to know is that anyone can set themselves up with a microscope and offer opinions on what the images represent - but there is in fact no cast iron way to know for absolute certain what they are looking at down a microscope.
these are just flat 2 dimensional images - and in the case of darkfield - not even in colour.
and human blood, especially that of sick people contains many things that "look like" they might be pathogens - but are not.
Buying and learning to operate a microscope is easy – learning to correctly interpret what you see is the hard part – taking years to learn properly - and even then - often objects cannot be fully identified definitively - only - "seems to match the pattern of" ... or "suspicious of".. type statements are possible
despite this fundamental lack of certainty / limitations of the method - many people express certainty in their views of what the images represent.
from my perspective - this has more to do with their pre-existing beliefs, fears or biases than it does reality, as typically even when presented with strong arguments to the contrary they are unable to adjust their view.
There is also a certain pressure on practitioners and labs who offer this service to present substantive findings – to serve their need to explain symptoms, diagnose disease and justify treatments/test cost.
As a result there is a bias towards over diagnosing via this method – via both DIY’ers and practitioners
OK -
back to basics - dark field microscopy can be used to diagnose spirochete based infections - but in reality usually only in lyme after the sample has been cultured for some weeks in a special medium to multiply the pathogens to high concentrations so they can be easily found on the slide.
this is because its very rare to find spirochetes in sufficiently high numbers in a blood sample of a human patient.
we know from various sources and studies that spirochetes are extremely rare in blood of chronic lyme patients' ( they like to live in the tissues not float free in the blood where they can be easily attached by the hosts immune system) - so much so that DNA/ PCR based test that are so sensitive they can detect even a single copy of spirochete DNA ( ie 1 spirochete ) in 0.5ml of blood ( enough blood for 20 full microscope slides) fail to detect infected persons around 50% of the time - illustrating just how rare it is to find spirochetes in the blood in chronic lyme disease.
think about it - If diagnosing lyme and co-infections was really as easy as a pin prick and 10minutes under a microscope you would see microscopes in every LLMDs office – in reality NONE of the best known LLMD’s use this method.
we should therefore be suspicious of any report that claims to find many many spirochetes in a single sample.
Sadly there are numerous sources of misinformation on this out there in the internet - including people / labs offering this dark field microscopy service - and youtube videos claiming spirochetes everywhere - and every few months someone pops up here on the forum with a report or images of what they have been told is lots of spirochetes and other organisms in their blood.
there may be some rare edge cases - like possibly in acute infection with some of the TBRF borrelia species that might if caught at just the right time in the infection have visible spirochetes - but in general its a red flag.
DFM is used for borrelia because they are so thin that they are down very near the resolution limit for light microscopy - and are near invisible with conventional light microscopy. the DFM method makes these transparent bodies visible by diffracting light off them - but the resulting resolution or image quality for other more opaque objects / pathogens is typically lower than conventional bright field microscopy.
this same property does not apply to other pathogens - and as a result DFM is not necessarily the best method to use to detect them.
for babesia and bartonella - conventional bright field with appropriate staining is more useful
the best education I can offer you is to read the microscopy thread – in the link in my signature - where you will find my own learning journey – including the best resources for differentiating things like babesia and bartonella I have found in the years I have been studying this
all that said - if you would like my opinion on the images in your link
the "borrelia" images are not convincing to me - too many, not characteristic zigzag shapes – too smooth curves. Probably represent cellular membrane debris - common in sick patients and also due to blood breakdown due to time / heat from strong microscope light etc etc
the Babesia image is not at all typical of babesia morphology - is too large relative to the red blood cell it appears to be inside – and is too featureless – normally there would be some features visible in the ring - chromatin bulges, break in the ring etc – in fact the object may not be inside the red blood cell at all – but could be almost anything, debris, degenerating red blood cell, bubble in the slide glass or in the liquid, fat globule etc etc - positioned vertically above or below the red blood cell.
Mycoplasma – the images themselves could be almost anything – the report referenced witnessing “gliding motility” – which is present in some mycoplasma species – including M. Pneumoniae – and which could be an indicator – we cannot tell this from a still image – and it could just as easily be Brownian motion to the untrained eye. Motion is often misinterpreted in microscope slides. We have seen reports before where the lab is adamant they have filmed “live spirochetes” – when its very clear they are referring to thread like objects being moved around by Brownian motion – a properly trained technician would easily know the difference.
The bartonella images are the most convincing to me – there is only a few of them – but this IS generally how bartonella presents – little clusters of affected red blood cells clumped together. Small approx. 1um vacuoles that look like bubbles inside – often arranged in rings or clusters. I would like to see more images – or ideally thin blood smears with Giemsa stain - but I would say based on these images bartonella is highly likely present.
I hope its of some help
Thank you Garzie. Your analysis was very helpful. Based on this, considering the bartonella seems the more convincing result wuold be wise for me to retest it with another method in order to have a definitive answer. For that, which method wuold you suggest? And I'm speaking about
bartonella alone.(I can't afford to test every single co infection again) so If that result positive I'll just jump on a full buhner protocol.
I've already been suggested galaxy labs which seems pretty expensive tho, but I also have heard good things about
igenex immunoblots and epcr. I wuold appreciate some guidance based on your knowledge .What do you think it's the more effective method for detect bart with less chance for errors?
(Preferably that will not make me bankrupt)