Hello Ag and Tvmanjon:
I have not been active here for a long time and my symptoms have evolved greatly, plus getting worse -- all connective tissue is burning, stinging, stiffening, tightening and getting sensitive to tension.
The less I touch NSAIDs the better. They give practically no benefit anyway and never really did -- did more harm than good. They should be banned from society!
I do not recall seeing anything more about using the antibiotic called moxifloxacin to treat klebsiella in AS.
I am not an expert but I imagine that AS is a multi-layered disease requiring at least an environmental cause of inflammation, an environmental factor that interferes with normal healing, the genetics to be predisposed to abnormal healing from inflammation, and genetics to react to an environmental contagion. The gut is a huge influence.
In my case, I do not have the genetics or contagion to cause the rapid kyphosis or ankylosing in the spine, but I do have quite a bit of spondylitis on one side of my upper spine that seems to be caused by infection(s) -- bartonella from kitten scratches and perhaps something I picked in my inner ear during a scuba diving accident five years ago. Before that I still had very isolated spondylitis, and the cause is suspected to be chronic, low-grade infection established almost 30 years ago (in my early 20s) that took advantage of a weak spot from a back injury sustained at age 10.
Related to the gut, my epithelial tissues -- skin, gut lining and blood vessels -- are not working right. There is neurological dysfunction in all of them and two of my doctors say it is from the bartonella infection. My gut doesn't hurt but feels dry, tight, stinging and burning from my mouth all the way to the anus. When I eat rice or other starch, the symptoms worsen. Two doctors are confident that microbial parasites are the cause and so I took their recommendation and ordered a DNA stool analysis from Diagnostics Solutions called GI-map.
The test showed:
- Prevotella copri at a level 10x higher than what is normally found in people who have it, which can easily explain why every synovial tissue (and others) are burning and stiff due to cross-reactivity of anti-bodies trying to target the p. copri.
- H. pylori at such low levels that I should not be having any issues from them. However the strain has a virulence factor called babA that might be significant.
- My healthy microbe populations are low in numbers and narrow in diversity, which will allow problems and so probitoics have been recommended.
- Klebsiella pneumoniae is present at a level of 100x lower than accepted maximum levels.
- A high normal for anti-gliadin IgA and a high normal for calprotectin indicting a busy gut immune system and some minor inflammtion respectively.
My symptoms look identical to AS -- spine effects are mostly in the sacrum and the base of the skull/jaw -- but have reduced in intensity since their peak in 2015. Inflammation has spread from my skeletal axis and moved into my feet and hands around October 2017 and February 2018 respectively.
One round of three weeks of clarithomyacin was done in February and it made a huge improvement in blood circulation in my hands and feet as I suspected it would. Central nervous system symptoms were mostly eliminated also. These signs and symptoms were caused by the bartonella. However problems in all my joints remain. Remaining infection of bartonella combined with the prevotella copri are assumed.
A second three week treatment using clarithomyacin just this month made no improvement and so a new combination of antibiotics are going to be tried (rifampin), but doc wants to target the prevotella corpi first with cipro (which is not a safe abx), but I literally feel that the p. copri is an important reason as to why my synovial membrane stinging, burning and pain increase when I eat starch.
I'm going try many antifungals too, even though candida DNA was not present. However, I do have gliotoxin in my urine and the best explanation is either foods or a strange, internal fungal infection. For the past five years I have not been able to naturally eliminate a common fungus on my toenail which indicates that branch of my immune system that should get rid if it is down regulated, suppressed by something since abusing NSAIDs in 2014-15.
The moral of the story, avoid infections from bugs and pets, and be kind to your gut.
