How many people have tested positive for cpn?

[terri]

Im asking because Bubba said people with morgellons disease have this.The reason Im asking is because I want to know which lab to get a good test from,both for me and my doubting husband who has asthma,its also implicated in asthma patients a very high number he and I have the same closed minded gp ,so I want to go to good lab gone are the days of it being tested only by sputum they can now test it in blood. love,terri

[Baraka Obam]

What is CPN, I look it up and it is a test to become a nurse!!! Some times abbreviations don't work so well!! Please enlighten me.

[Kritters]

Chlamydia pheumonia virus..........we have many posts on it. I'll look for some.

Kritters

[Kritters]

Can Pneumonia Lead to Heart Disease?

[Kritters]

http :// www . tangledneuron . info / the_tangled_neuron/2007/06/chlamydia-pneum.html

Chlamydia Pneumoniae and Alzheimer's

Summary: Infection with a common bacterium called Chlamydia pneumoniae may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s. The bacterium has already been linked to heart disease and hardening of the arteries. Work to investigate the role of viruses and bacteria such as Chlamydia pneumoniae in chronic diseases is in the early stages, but researchers hope it will help identify and treat the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s.

More study is needed to confirm the bacterium’s relationship with dementia, and rigorous clinical trials would be necessary before any treatments based on this research could be recommended.

I’ve written before about how viruses and bacteria can contribute to chronic diseases not previously linked to infections. It is now accepted that a type of bacteria contributes to ulcers, and that human papillomaviruses are the major cause of cervical cancer. A common bacterium called Chlamydia pneumoniae (also called Chlamydophila pneumoniae and C. pneumoniae) has been linked to atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) and other chronic diseases.

Dr. Brian Balin, a professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and Basic Science Director of the school’s Center for Chronic Disorders of Aging thinks that same bacterium may also contribute to many cases of Alzheimer’s. As the name indicates, the bacterium causes a type of pneumonia - it’s not the same as the sexually transmitted type of Chlamydia.

Although the link between C. pneumoniae and Alzheimer’s is not well-accepted, Dr. Balin has been researching the relationship for years. At a 1995 meeting he attended, talk turned to the possible link between the bacterium, hardening of the arteries and heart disease.

“I asked whether anyone had ever looked for the organism in brain tissue,” he remembers. “My background in neuropathology dealt with the blood brain barrier, and I had for some time believed that damage to the blood vessels in the brain could be involved in Alzheimer’s disease. My beliefs were not widely held….”

“Anyway, after asking the question, I performed a search of the literature and found that no one had ever looked in brain tissues for the presence of this infection.... So, I went to our -80 C freezers and pulled out frozen brain tissues from both AD [Alzheimer’s disease] and non-AD brains. I sent these samples in a coded or blinded fashion to Dr. Alan Hudson for analysis by polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is a way of testing whether the DNA of the organism was in the tissue samples.” [Dr. Hudson is a Wayne State University School of Medicine professor whose lab focuses on Chlamydia research.]

It turned out that the AD tissue samples contained the DNA from the bacterium, while the non-AD tissues did not. The two researchers repeated the experiment with different samples, and got the same results.

“This then led to our expanded experiments to determine whether C. pneumoniae could be detected using a variety of methods,” says Dr. Balin. “All in all, we used six different techniques which gave consistent results. The first publication of our work was in 1998 in Medical Microbiology and Immunology.”
[ ... ]

How Chlamydia Pneumoniae May Trigger Alzheimer’s

How could a type of pneumonia affect the brain? “My group has found that C. pneumoniae, once inhaled, infects white blood cells, in particular the monocytes that circulate throughout the blood stream,” Dr. Balin explains. “These cells can enter through the walls of the blood vessels and can carry the organism into different tissues, including the brain.”

“We also have evidence that the cells in our upper noses known as the olfactory neuroepithelial cells (those cells controlling our sense of smell) are infected by C. pneumoniae.” The olfactory neuroepithelial cells are close to the olfactory bulb region of the brain and to the hippocampus, where short term memory is formed. These areas of the brain are among the first to be affected by Alzheimer’s. This suggests there may be a link between infection with C. pneumoniae and the reported association between the loss of sense of smell and the onset of Alzheimer’s.

Finally, there is some tantalizing evidence that the bacterium may actually trigger the formation of the amyloid plaques characteristic of Alzheimer’s brains. When mice in Dr. Balin’s lab were infected with C. pneumoniae, they developed amyloid plaques in their brains. Adding to the evidence of the link between the bacterium and Alzheimer’s pathology, the bacterium was found near plaques and tangles in human Alzheimer’s brains studied in his lab.

C. Pneumoniae – Another Piece of the Dementia Puzzle?

Dr. Balin points out that the connection between C. pneumoniae and Alzheimer’s is consistent with other research on the disease. Some scientists think inflammation causes the brain damage seen in Alzheimer’s. “Quite possibly the inflammatory response due to a chronic persistent infection with C. pneumoniae and/or other infectants causes much of the cellular damage in the brain,” he says. “Also, genetic risk factors such as having the ApoE 4 variant which has been correlated with Alzheimer’s disease may actually increase one’s risk for being infected with C. pneumoniae and other infectants such as Herpes Simplex Virus 1. The interrelationship of ApoE with infectants may be how this variation confers greater risk for getting both infections and Alzheimer’s disease. Our data have shown that Alzheimer’s brains that express the ApoE4 variation actually have greater concentrations of C. pneumoniae than Alzheimer’s brains not expressing the variant.”

He thinks the connection between C. pneumoniae and hardening of the arteries may also be relevant to dementia. Of course, arteries are a type of blood vessel. Once white blood cells infected with C. pneumoniae reach the brain, Dr. Balin theorizes, they may damage the blood vessel walls there. This would contribute to vascular dementia and brain tissue damage.

But if exposure to Chlamydia pneumoniae is common, as indicated by the antibodies in many people’s blood, why don’t we all develop Alzheimer’s? “Exposure to an infectious agent does not necessarily translate into a specific disease,” says Dr. Balin. “There are many other factors, both genetic and environmental, that would dictate why some get a disease and others do not, even when you have a large percentage of the population exposed to the infectious agent. One example is exposure to the common cold viruses, which are very ubiquitous. Not everyone exposed gets a cold. …so, not everyone exposed to C. pneumoniae would develop Alzheimer’s, but the potential for the disease would be ever-present.”

Potential Treatments for Alzheimer’s and Dementia

Dr. Balin cautions against rushing to treat Alzheimer’s based on the possibility that C. pneumoniae could trigger the disease. “The dilemma that we face is that without current long-term effective treatments for AD, many people may want to try, even experimentally, other types of drug regimens based on the work that we and others are doing with infection,” he says. “Obviously, without clinical trials first, we cannot know for sure who would be most likely to benefit. We have to determine who is infected with which organism(s) and try to treat appropriately. This is why we really need a concerted effort to develop controlled clinical trials.”

He’s done some thinking about what types of therapies a clinical trial could test. “We know that Herpes Simplex Virus 1 may be involved in a significant number of AD cases and this may also have to be considered in a therapeutic regimen. All in all, I think that infection data (even at this point in time), suggests that using combination therapy of an anti-inflammatory, anti-chlamydial and an anti-viral for Herpes could be beneficial."

The “cocktail” he is proposing for trials includes anti-inflammatory medicines or NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin and ibuprofen). Although some population studies have shown a link between NSAID use and decreased risk of Alzheimer’s, evidence from clinical trials using NSAIDs to slow progression of the disease is not very encouraging. If inflammation is caused by infection with C. pneumoniae, Dr. Balin says, it’s unlikely that it could be controlled in the long run by NSAIDs alone.

Antibiotics targeted to Chlamydia bacteria are also part of the proposed cocktail. At least one study has shown antibiotics may slow progression of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s, but more research is needed. “Our research suggests that treating individuals who have Mild Cognitive Impairment, and those who have newly diagnosed and/or existing Mild AD, with anti-chlamydial antibiotics may have a positive effect by either stopping a trigger for the disease or preventing disease onset in the case of MCI,” Dr. Balin says.

But antibiotics don’t always wipe out C. pneumoniae, and as with other infectious disease, there are worries that the bacterium will become resistant to treatment. These worries have scientists searching for alternative therapies, Dr. Balin says. “The use of more novel anti-infection compounds, and potentially the development of a vaccine for these infectants could result in combating dementia-causing organisms.”

[...]

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Last edited by Niels; October 13th, 2008 at 04:02 PM. Reason: fix


Niels

[terri]

Hi, I see I miss spelled I was wondering what labs did people used to get tested for Chlamydia Pneumoniae that showed positive for it?, because my husband and I need one and what tests did they use to find it? also check this out about melatonin interesting ...http://www.cpnhelp.org/?q=serotonin_and_melatonin_n love terri

[terri]

Also does anyone know how much a Chlamydia pneumonia test will cost?

[carla]

I tested negative for it in labs test Terri, but tested positive for it when I had a live blood test .Both cost £60 each.
Was it Dr Harvey who said 98% of his Morgellons patients had tested positive for Lyme and CPV?

[browncircles]

Our local doctor tested my 93-year-old mom with a bloold test. She was positive. My husband and I were negative but we had antibodies to it showing we have had it in the past.

[terri]

Carla, I remember reading that same thing somewhere about Dr Harvey who said 98% of his Morgellons patients had tested positive for Lyme and CPV love terri