RA Flair?

[Jewels]

I am posting this for my mother. She has had RA for about 7 yrs. Took methotrexate shots until she was nearly crippled and then we found roadback. Her RA numbers were up to nearly 500 when first starting ap 4 yrs ago or so. She saw ap doc who put her on mino 100×2 a day, flagyl, clindamycin oral 10 days out of month. She nearly went in remission, numbers dropped to twenties. But something in 2016 going into 2017 happened and were not sure what. Her numbers slowly started climbing, and now they have reached 80. So dr switched flagyl to tindazole but that’s it. So have a appointment with ap dr next week. Wanted some feedback from some of you so we can go in armed and ready for dr appointment. Only thing we can think that’s changed is she was switched from Watson brand mino to torrent around that time. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Maz]

Jewels, the most likely culprit is the one you’ve already astutely identified…the change in generic brand of mino. Other possibilities….any chance she’s had a bug (passing flu, cold, tooth infection, etc?). People who have had walking pneumonia (without RA) can have severely elevated RF which it’s surmised may be a post-illness reaction to help clear the infection. Any stress in her life? Not sure of her age, but aging can result in an increase in labs (even healthy folks might have a positive RF or ANA, for example, with age), as can hormone changes. Have her inflammation markers (CRP and Sed Rate) increased at all?

A definition of a flare I came across is,

“A sudden exacerbation of a disease. Different from the day-to-day variation of the symptoms that patients with chronic disease experience and is characterized as a large and rapid increase in a patient’s usual symptoms.” By Unknown author, “Push.”

It’s worth noting that antibiotic therapy is not immune suppressive, so flares can and do continue to occur until a sustained remissive state is reached. Over time, however, flares should become less frequent, less severe, and shorter in duration. Your Mom had longstanding severe RA, so she’s done incredibly well to have a fairly straight continuum towards remission. Sounds like her doc is experienced and, if integrative, he/she should have some great tips on how to help her turn this around with a protocol tweak, some dietary advice, maybe some antioxidative strategies to help with detox, and/or checking hormone levels (thyroid, ovarian, adrenals), etc.

Best to your mom and hope her doc has some good insight to help turn this flare around. Let us know how she gets on, please, when you can. If you take a look at Carol Lange’s story in the book, Dr. Brown gave her a big whack with clindamycin Ivs to stop her flare in its tracks.

[Jewels]

Thank you so much Maz for all the incredible information. She hasn’t had any infections that we know of and I don’t think she had inflammation levels checked this past couple times. The only other thing elevated was the antibodies, which were very elevated(184). I was hoping the doctor would do the clindamycin IVs, she has only ever done the oral form. My mother is 70 and has done so well I really hate to see her go the other way. I thought about trying to get her the Minocycline from Canada along with the clindamycin IVs and see if it helps. But we will see what the doctor thinks and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of your help. This site is amazing and that’s where I first learned about antibiotic therapy for my mother almost 5 years ago. I now have scleroderma so when I first realized I had it, was easy to know what treatment I wanted. I’m not usually posting, I’m just stalking everyone else’s post:) thank you again so very much!

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