I found this (what I consider to be a) very interesting article when
searching Google Groups for Helicobator Pylori (the "discovery" of H.
Pylori's role in ulcers is fascinating and those intersted in the
history of Infectious Theory for RA need only to look at the history of
H. Pylori to see we are living the slow-mo instant replay. It took 100
years from the initial discovery of H. Pylori for the medical community
to reluctantly accept the truth of it. Today, everybody knows most
ulcers are caused by a bacteria). I would have just put a link to the
article but it's gone so I reprinted the whole thing here.
The article discusses the role of chlamydia and pneumonia in diseases
like alzenheimers but they have also been implicated in RA by medical
professionals who believe the infectious theory.
Stealth Invaders
Research suggests that many 'lifestyle'
diseases often are not caused by lifestyle at all, but by tiny
microorganisms that attack our bodies
HEALTHY LIVING: YOUR TUESDAY GUIDE to MEDICINE and HEALTH CARE
M.A.J. McKenna - Staff
Tuesday, December 26, 2000
Six days from today, you won't be able to park at any health club in Atlanta.
Six days from today is the first Monday of 2001, and people
everywhere will be launching exercise regimens. Some will be trying to
shed the results of holiday indulgence. Many more will be fulfilling
New Year's resolutions to do the right thing for their bodies: adopting
good habits that will protect their health long term.
But what if they're doing the wrong thing?
A provocative new body of medical research is finding that the
traditional advice for protecting against health problems such as heart
attack, cancer and stroke is a well-intentioned mistake. Exercising and
eating properly will improve your health overall, the theory says, but
it won't decrease your chances of developing the so-called lifestyle
diseases, because they are not caused by lifestyle at all.
In fact, the theory says, the chronic diseases responsible for most
premature death and disability are actually caused by infectious agents
--- viruses, bacteria, parasites and other pathogens. And if we could
identify the agents, and understand how to combat them, we could reduce
the impact of much chronic disease.
"We're used to thinking of the time of the great plagues as 100 or 500
years ago," said Paul Ewald, an evolutionary biologist at Amherst
College and a leader of this new school of thought. "But in terms of
the morbidity and mortality caused by underappreciated infections, we
are still living in plague time."
In a new book, "Plague Time: How Stealth Infections Cause Cancer,
Heart Disease and Other Deadly Ailments" (Free Press, ), Ewald sums
up the evidence for this new view, explaining research findings that so
far have linked pathogens to conditions from cervical cancer to peptic
ulcer, and predicting that atherosclerosis, Alzheimer's disease,
schizophrenia and other disorders will soon join the list as well.
Along the way, he offers consumer advice for folding these findings
into health care, warning that it may be decades before they are
accepted by many doctors.
"Twenty-five years ago, if you asked doctors the percentage of
cancers that were caused by infections, the answer would have been
one-thousandth of a percent,' " Ewald said. "In 1985, it would have
been 1 (percent) to 5 percent. Now, it's accepted to be 15 (percent) to
20 percent."
The view that chronic diseases have an underlying infectious cause
has been gathering support, and positive research results, for roughly
20 years. But it is still very much a minority view, because it
challenges a tenet of medicine that has stood for more than a century.
Under that rubric, diseases are either infectious or chronic. Infectious
diseases --- measles, for instance --- are caused by an organism that
can be isolated in an infected individual, grown under laboratory
conditions and used to cause the same infection in a second individual
such as a lab animal.
Chronic diseases such as clogged arteries are by definition
noninfectious. They arise under the influence of lifestyle --- eating a
high-fat diet or not exercising enough, for instance --- or due to
environmental or genetic factors. And though they cause the same
symptoms and problems in multiple individuals, they are not
communicated between individuals in the way infectious diseases are.
Early research into infectious causes for chronic diseases was
published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but it was more
than 80 years before the idea was taken seriously.
In a story that's since become famous, an Australian researcher, Barry
Marshall, proposed that a bacterium named Helicobacter pylori was
responsible for many cases of stomach ulcer, at the time a disease so
strongly linked to high levels of stomach acid produced by stress and
diet that "no acid, no ulcer" was the first rule of treatment.
Marshall shattered the assumption by intentionally drinking a dose of
the bacteria, developing the inflammation that precedes ulcers, and
curing himself with antibiotics --- a test later repeated by other
researchers who let the infection proceed all the way to ulcer
development before treating themselves.
Marshall published the results of his auto-experimenta-
tion in 1984. An international consensus that H. pylori caused peptic
ulcers was carved out at the National Institutes of Health in 1994. Yet
acceptance of ulcers' infectious nature --- and recognition that they
can be treated with a course of antibiotics rather than a lifelong
change in diet --- is still slow in coming, said Dr. Ben Gold, an
associate professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of
Medicine whose research focuses on ulcer disease in children.
"Despite almost insurmountable evidence, in terms of the behavior of
consumers and providers, change has been very slow in coming," he said.
One problem for the infectious-agent theory has been the drop of the
second shoe: a more nuanced recognition that, though pathogens may be
the root cause of chronic problems, lifestyle, environment or genetics
--- the traditional underpinnings of chronic diseases --- may play a
role as well.
It turns out, for instance, that up to half of the world's population
may be infected with H. pylori,
yet nowhere near that many people develop peptic ulcers, suggesting the
involvement of some genetic vulnerability. Similarly, though heart
disease is widespread, it is nowhere near as widely distributed as
Chlamydia pneumoniae, a close cousin of the sexually transmitted
disease chlamydia that is suspected of causing inflammation of the
lining of blood vessels.
"It seems likely that there is an immune response involved," said Dr.
Kimberly Workowski, a chlamydia researcher at both Emory and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Several pathogens have
shown a statistical association with heart disease, and it may turn out
that the identity of the actual organism is not that important."
In "Plague Time," Ewald reports on research that suggests an interplay
of infectious agent and genetics for one chronic killer, Alzheimer's disease.
Findings this year show an association between C. pneumoniae, which is
also believed to have a role in Alzheimer's, and APO (sigma)4, a gene
previously identified as a risk factor for Alzheimer's. The presence of
the gene, it turns out, may confer greater susceptibility to infection
with C. pneumoniae --- and thus explain one gene-pathogen interaction
underlying a chronic disease.
If the theory is correct, and the diseases most responsible for
premature death are caused by infections, then why not attempt to cure the infections?
Research has begun to tackle that question: Studies completed so far
have shown that antibiotics reduce the inflammation in blood vessels;
three large clinical trials that will take four more years to complete
are now examining whether heart attacks can be reduced. But any
proposal to decrease heart disease by using more antibiotics will
immediately bump up against another public-health concern: that disease
organisms are growing drug-resistant because antibiotics are already
too widely used.
Because medicine's acceptance of infectious causes for chronic
diseases has been slow in coming, it may be a while before consumers
hear the theory from their doctors. For those who choose not to wait,
Ewald offers some
dvice.
This makes really good sense to me.
My Dad suffered from peptic ulcers since he was about 12 years old. He got a very bad UTI about age 56. He was treated with sulfa drugs - then allergy, and switch to an antbiotic then allergy, to make a long story shorter he was on various antibiotics for 9 months before he was completely over the UTI. He lived to be age 72 and did not suffer ever again from an ulcer after that time on antibiotics.
This is really amazing because he also had severe osteo-athritis and needed nsaids daily. At age 62 he also developed heart disease and took aspirin on top of nsads daily. Still no ulcers.
I think I'm going to get Ewald's books. For my copious spare time. LOL
Now that Dr. Marshall - drinking the H. Pylori - that takes....um....heuvo's.
Pip
And don't forget about the connection between periodontal disease and heart disease! Near and dear to my heart because my husband has both