Hi John

I have been giving some consideration to your points about Ebringer's studies -

"In 20 years and over 450 patients Ebringer did not find one person with AS that was not caused by Klebsiella pneumoniae and those on his unsupervised 'eat whatever you want but try and follow my London AS Diet' had a greater than 98% success rate ..."

This seems to present an open and shut case supporting your position that all AS sufferers can improve their condition by diet modification. Or does it?

I have tried to find details of Ebringer's studies and reviews of them on-line without success so what follows is just based on common sense.

For his studies Ebringer must have required committed volunteers. They would have to agree to real restrictions on their eating for what - weeks(?). I can imagine the response of some non-diet AS people I know who have lived with the disease for say 10 years to a request to take part in such a study. A suggestion they should give up bread, potato, ice-cream, beer etc. to help a researcher prove a theory they had already decided long ago was false. Answers along the lines of "You've got to be joking" or "Not #?!£&* likely!" wouldn't be far off.

But what about the recently diagnosed? They would have an open mind free of prejudice wouldn't they? Who is the professional closest to them on their disease, the one they would most likely seek for advice before going on a study related to AS? It is probably the one who diagnosed them - their radiologist. We all know what advice he would be likely to give. On the other hand there could be people like me who was asking questions about diet-symptom connections well before I was diagnosed. Of course I would jump at the opportunity to take part in such a survey. I think much the same could be said of many Kickas members.

So what am I saying? It seems to me Ebringer's study groups would most likely consist predominantly of people very like the Kickas group of members. This would then put in question Ebringer's conclusions applying to all AS sufferers (applying to the pro-diet AS group only?).

The above assumes attitudes of AS sufferers were the same at the time of Ebringer's studies as they are today, which may not necessarily be true.

Wally