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Jim, Linda, and Bec,
There does seem to be a way of quantifying the presence of certain
intestinal flora. I just returned from the Defeat Autism Now! conference in
Chicago, where one of the speakers, William Shaw, spoke of the work he had
been doing on identifying intestinal flora by recognition of the metabolic
tracks they leave behind in the urine which are detectable by organic acid
testing. In the course of his work, he had noticed some unidentified blips
on these tests, and researched what chemicals they were and which organisms
were likely to have produced them as byproducts of their own metabolism.
He has been at Children's Mercy Hospital, but has just resigned due to their
lack of interest and support for this aspect of his work, and is looking for
a position elsewhere, where he hopes to continue this research. He was able
to show proof of the Herxheimer reaction (the die-off from Candida when on
anti-Candida medication) by showing the increases of its metabolites in the
urine as the organisms died, lysed, and thus released their contents into
the system.
He also mentioned that he had done organic acid tests on a patient with
hypoglycemia (and seizure) of unknown cause which had started after this
patient had had strep and was treated with antibiotics. Dr. Shaw
recogninised the tracks left by an organism in the patient's urine, so that
they eventually treated this patient with nystatin and the patient's glucose
levels returned to normal for the first time since the hypoglycemia had been
identified (many, many months).
His work is fascinating, and shows great promise of being very helpful to
those with gut problems. Unfortunately, at the moment he is unable to do
this sort of analysis for anyone until he finds a new position.
Also, by the way, one of the speakers (can't find it in my notes!) showed
the graph of a patient with some kind of neurological problem, I believe,
who failed miserably a gut permeability test, but who after being treated
for an intestinal visitor, was retested, and his gut was no longer
over-permeable. This certainly made me think...and it was coupled with a
lot of evidence from others that dysbiosis in the gut can have lots of
systemic consequences. Dr. Gupta, for instance, who is using IVIG therapy
to treat autism and some other diseases, explained how Candida was able to
set up a cycle that played one set of immune complexes against another
involving TH1 and TH2 cells. Candida is therefore quite successful at using
us to its advantage!
But I came out of the conference with the impression, which was also
confirmed by a little studying I did earlier this year, that when the body
is fighting off an infection, the immune system releases some chemicals that
contribute to the leakiness of the gut. How this might relate to the
beginnings of the autoimmune process associated with celiac can be left to
the imagination!
Hopefully remembering all of this correctly,
Susan Owens
PS. And by the way, Jim, several doctors there said they were not confident
that all residents of the intestines left tracks that could be picked up in
the feces. At least one had successfully treated a patient whose lab
reports from stool sample showed up nothing, but whom he treated anyway, and
the patient improved.
At 05:24 AM 6/17/96 -0500, Jim Barron wrote:
>There is a major problem in accessing the effect of the balance of
>intestinal flora.
> (Unless there are recent developments of which I am not aware) there are
>currently no tests available to test the relative QUANTITIES of the various
>microorganisms resident in the intestines. Currently available tests can
>detect the PRESENCE of various microorganisms.
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(Walter & Susan Owens)
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Dallas, Texas USA
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