ali,
i would have to disagree with your rheumy regarding antibiotics dont help AS or else they would be prescribing them like mad. rheumys do prescribe antibiotics for AS like mad...its called sulphasalazine.
im not critizing doctors, but for these types of diseases, they only know what the medical textbooks says and drug companies tell them. all doctors are bound by "standards of medical practice" or else they could get sued like crazy and there would be no formal procedure for clinical medecine. i personally feel i know more about AS, its treatments, its symptoms and outcomes than all my doctors combined because im the one with the disease, i have experiemented with my own body and information is so widely available now (unlike 20 years ago where your doctor was your only source of information). when i was dxed, my doctor told me hardly anything. i learned so much more about the condition thru places such as this and web.
i liken it to history. i only know the events of say WWII from textbooks where someone has decided this is the way it should be written; however, if i lived during that time and went thru the whole experience, im sure i would know a lot of things the textbooks dont say.
regarding the immunosuppressants and TNF inhibitors, i think these can be of great value for those who are not responsive to other treatments and have severe cases. however, i think immunosuppression is a backwards way to treat the disease and TNF is a clever way to short circuit the immune system. i dont believe either of these attack the disease at its root cause, which is somewhere in the intestinal tract where bacteria play a role. sulphasalazine may be the closest drug to the root cause, which is why i am taking it.
-ken
