Interesting article about Bartonella

[spacehoppa]

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/21/492795/the-pain-of-bartonella.html

He has already established that about 25 percent of unexplained fever illnesses among a group of patients there was caused by Bartonella .

“This is not limited to cat scratch,” Kosoy said. “That's just the tip of the iceberg.”

Breitschwerdt said he thinks the bacteria may be the hidden cause behind a host of chronic symptoms – muscle aches, neurological problems, fatigue, arthritis – that defy diagnosis…

…Of Mozayeni's mystery patients tested at the lab, nearly 20 percent had Bartonella infections.

“I suspect this is going to be one of the causes of rheumatoid arthritis and a few other things, but it's too speculative right now to say,” Mozayeni said.

“Certainly, the prevalence of Bartonella infection in people with chronic illness is higher than I would have ever guessed, but we still don't know what that means,” Breitschwerdt said.

Among the biggest unknowns is how to treat people who have been infected. The effectiveness of antibiotics depends on which strain of Bartonella is at work, and with so many strains, treatments can be hit or miss.

Breitschwerdt said the family in his most recent study declined to comment about their experience. He said they were having difficulty finding a doctor.

“It is very difficult to find a physician who wants to see someone with a chronic illness that is poorly defined,” he said, adding that many such patients often think they have Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection with similar symptoms – and stigma. “With an unexplained illness, it becomes problematic.”

[JBJBJB]

It's a very interesting article. I was more interested in how the parents who were infected passed their bacterias to their children.

“Although more studies are needed to back up his findings, Breitschwerdt and colleagues describe the case of a mother and father who began battling chronic aches, fatigues and other symptoms soon after they were married. When their twins were born in 1998, the daughter died after nine days from a heart defect, and the son developed chronic health problems.

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/05/21/492795/the-pain-of-bartonella.html#ixzz0ohb5FPOu“

I have been wondering about this issue, as I posted to this question on the other thread and talked about flea infection.

Scary.

 

 

 

 
 

[Maz]

Ruth, terrific find and thanks for posting. This line really caught my attention, as I'm sure it must have done you, too:

“I suspect this is going to be one of the causes of rheumatoid arthritis and a few other things, but it's too speculative right now to say,” Mozayeni said.”

It's also very much in line with what Burrascano has been talking about for some time now…that many Lyme patients are co-infected with BLOs or bartonella-like organisms. The many strains of these coinfections, in addition to the many strains of borreliosis, is what can make Lyme treatment so complicated. No one patient is going to be exactly like another in terms of pathogen load. When you think there are 100 strains of borrelia in the US and 300 worldwide and so many strains of babesiosis and bartonella…the playing field gets a lot bigger.

Thanks for sharing this!

Peace, Maz

 

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