Dear Evelyn:
Please do not mistake my curtness as a lack of respect; we have been contrapuntal on this exact topic ad infinitum and our last exchange was not only frustrating, but it was not completed because you lost your response to my objections about the papers that you had referenced.
If you are interested, since you are still referring to these off-mark articles, I will repost my series of questions and even edit out my most objectionable commentary.
As you stated, any therapy can possess clinical value even if the theory behind it is not correct. As much as I like the Road Back Foundation, I believe that their theory, relative to AS, must be wrong--but their therapy can work for reasons other than they have conceived.
Antibiotics: I know that you believe that certain cases of AS can be ameliorated by the use of some antibiotics. In my own experience during the early stages of my own antibiotic trials, I found many that worked and many that did not. As far as I am concerned, after reviewing my results, I have a firm statistical lock (a factoral-combination lock) on Kp as the pathogen. Several convenient agents had no effect against AS and most notably amoxycillian (a cheap and common drug that I really hoped would work). One of the few germs that broad spectrum amoxycillian has no effect against is Kp. I only learned of this fact after I had tried it. I admit, however, my perspective was (and is) "tainted" by Ebringer's very convincing work. In 1992 he published an article: "Ankylosing Spondylitis is caused by Klebsiella," and he reviewed both the supportive and contrary literature after actually doing the laboratory work missing from the more speculative papers that suggested some pathogenesis based upon other arthritogenic (and suspect) agents. More than a gaggle of these were tested and did not produce the crossreactivity that Kp does. In immunology, especially, there is some jeopardy in employing Occam's razor, but the Kp connection is a moot issue until I find a totally and exclusively specific agent and it either does--or does not--work.
And further into the philosophical realm, this time with reference to Pascal's Wager, none of the Kp-contrary references have produced any useful therapy. No matter how skeptical I might be, the bargain is to accept the potential of salvation via LSD/NSD and/or even the less-dangerous-than-NSAIDs (and most other drugs for AS) antibiotics. And these things especially in the light of the long-term results from Ebringer's Middlesex London AS Clinic wherein more than 600 sinners actually made it into heaven--including the skeptics amongst them.
Ok then, diet again
Ebringer could still be wrong about Kp, but I have found a minimum of five other substantial (albeit 'anecdotal') starch reduction/elimination regimens that have worked against AS. As I have stated before, whether germ or worm or fungus among us--it must really like starches.
Intestinal fortitude
The actual fact that peripheral Kp-specific immunoglobulin levels are lowered in subjects with active AS does not mean that Kp is not involved, but it (and I would say absolutely) almost certainly means the exact opposite:
1) When the Kp-IgA attach to Kp, they are consumed.
2) When the Kp-IgA attach to type I, III, IV, and V collagen Osp, they are consumed.
3) Kp colonies produce a mucoid polysaccharide capsule and viscous exudate that contains an anti-immunoglobulin factor that consumes IgA, as well as creates a physical isolation mechanism from macrophage. It is no mystery that this immune component is depleted from our peripheral systems.
Total in sera IgA, however, is always greatly increased in every case of active AS evaluated, and Kp-specific IgA concentration as the monomer are many times greater in those with AS than controls. If the DIMER (which has the same mol. weight as HSP60) were measured in the lymph (I say that AS is a disease of lymph), the numbers would be many orders of magnitude higher, differentiating controls from test subjects with extreme ease and accuracy.
Animals: I do not know how long it took my immune system to train against Kp (if that's what happened), but it is not an automatic process and took several years to elicit the AS disease process (according to Ebringer, "Klebsiella-reactive arthritis"). How many years can we study rats? They usually have a short lifespan--I know that I did not have AS at age 2 or even 3 and I was born with pneumonia (and more than once wished their primitive medicine had not spared me for the abuse AS has entertained me with over the years, but I do imagine that it could have been a bacterial pneumonia and even caused by our favorite bacterium).
Discontinuity: I suppose that our older exchange is still available on the old forum, and I just do not even want revisit the details of extreme logical flaws in certain of your citings; if you or anyone else is interested, I'm sure they can still be located. My questions were unanswered then and I have even more today, after discussing these issues with a couple of experts (I thought would be pretty dispassionate...).
Please don't take this in the wrong way--the bad science in these papers is no reflection on you at all; you did not produce the folly and only had the abstracts and conclusions upon which to justify their propagation and dissemination in support of your own position.
Perhaps you concede that both antibiotics and diet can work against AS, yet do not agree with Ebringer that Kp has a primary role in the disease process as well as the MHC antigen expressing Osps that react with Kp-specific IgA. I accept your position completely and have no particular interest in changing your mind. There are, however, those people with AS who can still benefit from employing the therapies that work both long-term and quite safely (and by what ever mechanism might be involved) and I think that it would have been a major disservice to our members had a few adherents not persevered in keeping the NSD &c as a major practical option within the kickas community. While 'healthy' debate should be encouraged, some of the obfuscating contrary data has enough people confused to the extent that they suffer the paralysis from overanalysis: Perhaps Columbus should have just debated the flat-earth concept instead of actually sailing off...
