James Schaller, MD Hypothesis on Bartonella Brain Effects Including Cat-scratch

[Guest guest]

James Schaller, MD Hypothesis on Bartonella Brain Effects Including

Cat-scratch Encephalopathy [brain Inflammation or Disease], Psychiatric and

Personality Problems

_http://www.bartonellamd.com/articles/bartonellabraineffects.html_

(http://www.bartonellamd.com/articles/bartonellabraineffects.html)

 

 

Currently there is a severe lack of appreciation for the effects of

Bartonella on the brain. If it is ever diagnosed, it is before it lowers its

own

antibodies with its immune suppression ability and causes catastrophic

organ effects. We feel the reality is that since Bartonella has over two

hundred genetic variants which no lab in the world is close to testing, and is

virtually never seen in a routine rushed manual blood smear, that it is

missed 99% of the time in routine medicine. This is a concern. We hope we are

wrong.

 

For a number of years, we have used highly aggressive direct and indirect

testing, multiple laboratories, and peer reviewed journal articles

reporting Bartonella biochemical changes, found in significant abnormal levels

in

Bartonella patients, which should alter skin patterns.

 

Tom was bitten by fleas found in his grass and inside his home carried in

on his dog and soon after these bites had new red papules that he, his wife

and local physicians missed.

 

Over the next few months he had an increase in boredom, depression,

anxiety, agitation, insomnia, rigidity and hostility. He began showing many

narcissistic personality characteristics. Tom became angry and attacked

people's

motives, always assuming the worst to the point of being eccentrically

nasty.

 

He was found positive by a couple laboratories for Bartonella only after

his self treatment with some potent antibacterial herbs. His initial labs

were negative. Perhaps the herbs worked or the immune system somehow was able

to beat temporarily the immune suppression of Bartonella. Who can say?

 

Finny from Arizona was exposed to deer ticks in a camping trip in the

Carolinas to celebrate his 29th birthday. After a couple of deer tick bites he

was abusive in word and deed. He because " wired " and " scary " according to

his family and friends. He began writing emails insulting a wide range of

people and had a clear change in his personality over years. He did have

slightly enlarged lymph nodes during his camping trip, which is supposed to be

a routine finding with Bartonella—we do not agree. We feel it is a rare

finding.

 

He was treated for Lyme disease, Babesia and Bartonella based on the

treatment of a LL MD who used IV treatment for three months, Mepron 1500 mg for

five months [perhaps based on a 1995 paper approach] and artemisinin which

is a malaria treatment with dubious proven effects against treatment

resistant Babesia, and it also has rapidly lowered potency and side effects in

excess of benefits at high doses.

 

Routine antibiotics which are supposed to cure Bartonella were all used by

this patient or his initial physicians. These were traditional and " Lyme

literate " physicians with a traditional and progressive approaches. (We feel

these do not cure based on our inherited patients who have used these

treatments). Finny and our other Bartonella positive inherited patients were

treated with Levaquin, doxycycline, Zithromax or azithromycin, Ceftin,

Mycobutin and Rifampin. Others were given high doses of very small amounts of

various herbs at high liquid doses in grain alcohol, a vast array of commonly

promoted " cure " herbs, misc. Rife treatment approaches, sauna treatment,

" advanced " silver products, Ondimed energy treatment, heavy metal and immune

booster treatments and hyperbaric oxygen (HBOT) treatment. We do feel any or

all of these traditional or alternative medicine options might cause a

serious decrease in Bartonella, including the removal of all Bartonella

symptoms for a period of time, but at some point Bartonella returns. Knowing

how

to determine its return is not routine medicine. The use of mere antibody

Bartonella testing does not make sense, since Bartonella appears to lower

immunity and antibodies in our blinded studies. Since some patients very

rarely have high antibodies, in very rare cases we suspect this is due to an

acute reaction due to a new infection or some effect of a treatment

transiently.

 

Finny failed routine dosing of antidepressants and anti-anxiety

treatments. He was given antipsychotics at low doses which lowered his

agitation and

bizarre emails and phone calls. He became less hateful and bizarre.

 

When his treatment was adjusted to treat him with unique modern blind

tested treatments, which are not well-known nor understood by most physicians,

he was vastly improved. Curiously, some physicians and ill patients only

embrace many relapsing treatments, meaning they failed in the long-term, and

do not bother to read widely or carefully any new Bartonella information.

Often, the illness and cost determines who is trusted for treatment.

 

We could list a large number of psychiatric effects of Bartonella, and we

mention a few in our Medscape article with a full sample of 88 references.

This appears to be one of the first articles on Bartonella and psychiatry.

Such a poverty of psychiatric research with an infection with over 2,000

articles and which is very common is a disaster. This is a serious emerging

" new " infection with many species and variants with no test for all the

species that infect humans, and little funding or new research into it.

Therefore, we suspect it will be 15-25 plus years before it is taken seriously

and

noted in psychiatry by psychiatrists. While you wait for main stream

medicine to catch up, many will commit suicide, assaults, lose friends, get

divorced, engage in domestic violence, are rejected due personality pathology,

have brain injury, etc. It is quite possible all psychiatric disorders can

be enhanced or created by Bartonella, because it can affect any part of the

brain or the entire brain.

 

In conclusion, PET and SPECT scans are far better at showing changes due

to Bartonella than an MRI which does not show tiny alterations in brain

tissue metabolism, but indirect lab testing is perhaps best in all ages, and

new Bartonella induced skin marks in adults over twenty is also a proposed

addition tool. Bartonella alters blood flow and vascular development and

makes tissue to allow it to survive, and these facts have not been applied

clinically except in our Bartonella texts. Skin markings vary in weight in

diagnosis. Some skin findings offer serious suspicion of Bartonella and others

can have ten causes, including Bartonella, or Bartonella or " Cat-scratch "

fused with Lyme disease, and so they are merely tentatively noted. It is a

concern that very little dermatology material exists on the effect of

Bartonella, or Bartonella plus untreated Lyme disease on the skin.