CyrilCrodius
New member
First, my own testimony.In the last 4 years, I had something like 6 courses of IV antibiotics. It is my opinion that I did not need most of them. I was pretty much stable. Not a high stable, but stable nonetheless. I had been around 40%-37% FEV1 for at least 2 years.What was happening is that sometimes I was having relatively frequent episodes of hemoptysis (2-monthly/monthly/weekly, it was very variable) but otherwise I was feeling normal. That wasn't new, I had already been coughing up blood more or less regularly since I was 14. One time it even happened on the very day I was being discharged from hospital after 14 days of IV. Plus, when I started having these episodes of hemoptysis at 14, I noticed that they happened every time I used a turbohaler. That is to say, the episodes of hemoptysis weren't expressedly related to exacerbations. They were caused by fragile lungs, inflammation and abnormally enlarged lung arteries and increased blood flow to the lungs due to chronic infection, as we found out 2 years ago. So when I was going to my CF checkups, when my doc was asking whether I was coughing up blood, I was answering that yes I did. Automatically he assumed I was having an exacerbation and put me on IV antibiotics to treat it.I knew that I did not need them. I was feeling very alright. Even when I wasn't feeling too alright, it was always something my body could get over by itself and my doc was never hearing anything about it. But then I thought the IV couldn't hurt, so I took them anyway.
Every time I came out of it worse than I was before. If the worse was not immediately after, it would be about 1 to 2 weeks after. It was as though the courses of antibiotics had broken a kind of statu quo, a kind of balance that my body had established with my communities of bacterias. My health would become kind of unstable in a way that is difficult to describe. It would get chaotically worse then get better as my body would regain balance/the control of things. I knew that I had a strain of PA that was more resistant than the other to antibiotics, plus one is mucous while the other is not. I think I asked my pneumologist whether it could be possible that antibiotics were breaking a kind of balance that was established between my two communities of bacterias and that it was making things worse rather than better and he said no.
Turns out I might have been right. Read the following.
<a href="http://www.mdnews.com/news/2012_03/decade-long-study-raises-new">http://www.mdnews.com/news/2012_03/decade-long-study-raises-new</a>
<h3>When it comes to treating cystic fibrosis, the current standard of aggressive antibiotic treatments may not always be the best answer, a decade-long study led by researchers at the University of Michigan has found.</h3>
<strong>ANN ARBOR, MI</strong> — Traditionally, bacteria-blasting antibiotics are used to suppress infection in CF patients’ lungs to the lowest level possible, but maintaining a diversity of bacterial communities may help some patients stay healthy longer, says the study’s senior author, John J. LiPuma, M.D.
The findings appear in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>.
“The conventional wisdom has been that as patients with CF age and become sicker, as their lung disease progresses, more and more bacteria move in,” says LiPuma, the James L. Wilson, M.D., Research Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the U-M Medical School. “But our study – which was the first to examine the bacterial communities in CF patients’ lungs over a long period of time – indicates that’s not what happens.”
Instead, aggressive use of antibiotics – rather than a patient’s age or disease progression – is responsible for lowering the diversity of lung bacteria, leading to infections that become increasingly hard to treat. A diverse community of bacteria may encourage competition that keeps the most virulent strains in check, the researchers found.More at link.
Every time I came out of it worse than I was before. If the worse was not immediately after, it would be about 1 to 2 weeks after. It was as though the courses of antibiotics had broken a kind of statu quo, a kind of balance that my body had established with my communities of bacterias. My health would become kind of unstable in a way that is difficult to describe. It would get chaotically worse then get better as my body would regain balance/the control of things. I knew that I had a strain of PA that was more resistant than the other to antibiotics, plus one is mucous while the other is not. I think I asked my pneumologist whether it could be possible that antibiotics were breaking a kind of balance that was established between my two communities of bacterias and that it was making things worse rather than better and he said no.
Turns out I might have been right. Read the following.
<a href="http://www.mdnews.com/news/2012_03/decade-long-study-raises-new">http://www.mdnews.com/news/2012_03/decade-long-study-raises-new</a>
<h3>When it comes to treating cystic fibrosis, the current standard of aggressive antibiotic treatments may not always be the best answer, a decade-long study led by researchers at the University of Michigan has found.</h3>
<strong>ANN ARBOR, MI</strong> — Traditionally, bacteria-blasting antibiotics are used to suppress infection in CF patients’ lungs to the lowest level possible, but maintaining a diversity of bacterial communities may help some patients stay healthy longer, says the study’s senior author, John J. LiPuma, M.D.
The findings appear in the <em>Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences</em>.
“The conventional wisdom has been that as patients with CF age and become sicker, as their lung disease progresses, more and more bacteria move in,” says LiPuma, the James L. Wilson, M.D., Research Professor of Pediatrics and Communicable Diseases at the U-M Medical School. “But our study – which was the first to examine the bacterial communities in CF patients’ lungs over a long period of time – indicates that’s not what happens.”
Instead, aggressive use of antibiotics – rather than a patient’s age or disease progression – is responsible for lowering the diversity of lung bacteria, leading to infections that become increasingly hard to treat. A diverse community of bacteria may encourage competition that keeps the most virulent strains in check, the researchers found.More at link.