How to Identify Infections at the Root Cause of Many Common Chronic Diseases
Published on 18 May, 2023
Dr Armin Schwarzbach is the Founder and Medical Director at ArminLabs, Augsburg, Germany. He is a Medical Doctor who specialises in laboratory medicine in infectiology, microbiology, immunology, haematology, clinical chemistry, endocrinology and gynaecological endocrinology.
So many conditions that appear mysterious and are all too often dismissed as psychiatric in fact have an underlying viral or bacterial cause.
Enterobacteria and enteroviruses for example are commonly overlooked. The enterobacterium Yersinia enterocolitica can be picked up from contaminated food or water or eating raw or undercooked meat.
The most common vectors are rodents and fleas. Human to human transmission is possible too and infection from blood transfusion. It starts by penetrating the intestinal wall and the mesenteric lymph nodes; if it becomes systemic it can cause reactive arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, central and peripheral nervous system manifestations, and multisystem disease.
75% of patients with thyroid disorders have been found to have high Yersinia titres, especially in Hashimoto’s as well as Grave’s disease, because molecular mimicry can cause it to cross-react with the thyroid gland.
Byron Hyde and the picornavirus connection
Dr Byron Hyde is perhaps the world’s strongest advocate of enteroviruses as the prime factor underlying myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME). He points to how enteroviruses can invade the central nervous system, resulting in neurological symptoms. “In recent years, large outbreaks of enteroviruses have occurred worldwide. These neurotropic enteroviruses have been deemed as re-emerging pathogens.” The picornaviruses include polio and Dr Hyde and others have often found Coxsackie of different strains in patients whose symptoms have been considered too puzzling to unravel.
Indeed, he emphasises that the last major epidemic of paralytic poliomyelitis in the Soviet Union was caused by Coxsackie. He is now highlighting in his clinical and educational work the vital interconnections between myalgic encephalomyelitis, poliomyelitis and what he calls “the new polios” (acute flaccid paralysis/myelitis).
The hand, foot and mouth form is generally Coxsackie A (as detected by Dr C. Sinclair and Dr E. Gaunt in Edinburgh as a cluster, which was published in the medical journal Euro Surveillance in 2014), whereas the more systemic myelitis-type forms tend to be Coxsackie B.
He explains how the poliomyelitis and ME enteroviruses have adapted to different loci in the body: above the brainstem and in the brain, they injure small blood vessels supplying the insular cortex of the central nervous system, which is one of the areas that regulates blood pressure, heart rate and peripheral artery contractibility.
This helps to explain the dysautonomia and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) often seen in these patients.
In amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a study from March 2018 entitled Enteroviral Infection: The Forgotten Link to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis? added further evidence that “conserved enteroviral sequences closely related to Coxsackie B virus sequences were detectable in spinal cords from subjects with sporadic motor neurone disease.”
Infections in conditions labelled neuropsychiatric
Frequently, infections can also be found in patients who have been deemed neuropsychiatric. Does the patient have pets, or has he/she ever been around animals? Cats and dogs can carry ticks into the house and a bite behind the hairline or the ear can easily go unnoticed.
Fleas can also be vectors for Borrelia and Bartonella: Neuroborreliosis is a late-stage presentation of Lyme disease and Bartonella is well known for causing psychiatric symptoms.
Toxoplasma gondii is a protozoan parasite spread by cats that removes rodents’ innate fear of cats. It is also known to alter behaviour in its human host that can easily be dismissed as inexplicable/neurotic.
Indeed, countless neuropsychiatric conditions can have infectious causes: schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, ASD/ Autism, OCD/Tourette’s, and PANS/PANDAS (autoimmune encephalopathies increasingly being recognized in both children and adults).
It is so worthwhile testing for infections in these cases, if there is reason to suspect them, rather than patients being consigned to psychiatric medications for the rest of their lives.
Statistics have revealed that up to 40% of patients with Lyme disease develop neurologic involvement of either the peripheral or central nervous system.
In addition to Borrelia, Chlamydia pneumoniae, toxoplasma and various herpes viruses have been found in patients originally diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar-like disorders.
Panic attacks, cognitive disorders, mood disorders and anxiety can all have infectious drivers – Borrelia and Bartonella most commonly, as well as Toxoplasma and HHV-6. Even with OCD and Tourette’s, which are notoriously difficult conditions to wrest from the aegis of psychiatry, studies have clearly detected the involvement of Toxoplasma, Mycoplasma, Bartonella and the neurological manifestations of Borrelia.
Hidden culprits in fibromyalgia?
Fibromyalgia is also a condition that conventional medicine often draws a blank at: patients are all too often dismissed with NSAIDs and steroids. There are clear associations however with both bacterial and viral infections. Not just with Borrelia – though this is of course a prime culprit – but also with other vector-borne infections, which leading scientists such as Professor Garth Nicolson have found again and again in studies, like Mycoplasma, Chlamydia pneumoniae, Varicella Zoster and Rickettsia.
Again, it is worth remembering that many symptoms of Yersinia enterocolitica overlap with those of fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis.
Research over four decades has shown an association between multiple sclerosis and Borrelia: Dr Vincent Marshall’s exhaustive studies from as far back as the 80’s showed spirochetes on the axons of nerves of MS patient autopsies in Europe.
David Wheldon MD’s work has shown powerful links with Chlamydia pneumoniae and case studies also exist of Bartonella-induced MS.
Dementia – could plaques be protective rather than the fiend?
One of the most astounding findings of recent years – shared by the renowned Dr Dale Bredesen in his work – is that Alzheimer’s can have a microbial component. A 2016 editorial in the Journal of Alzheimer‘s disease by 31 authors is summed up in the words of Professor Douglas Kell of Manchester University, who writes:
“There is incontrovertible evidence that Alzheimer’s Disease has a dormant microbial component. We can’t keep ignoring all the evidence.”
Even more astonishing is the finding that amyloid plaques in Alzheimer’s disease may in fact be protection against microbial infection, rather than the “enemy”. “When you look in the plaques, each one had a single bacterium in it. A single bacterium can induce an entire plaque overnight” wrote the researchers Kumar, Tanzi et al in their seminal May 2016 paper. The 2016 Itzhaki et al “Microbes and Alzheimer’s disease” paper states that there are “now about 100 [studies] on HSV1 alone.”
First published in Only Natural – The Newsletter of The Natural Dispensary, Issue32: Summer 2019
In 2019 Dr. Armin Schwarzbach spoke at AONM’s May 12th Conference – Multi-System Diseases: Improving Patients’ Lives with Proper Diagnosis and Appropriate Treatment Interventions. He spoke on testing for enteroviruses and other stealth infections. His presentation video can be found HERE and his presentation slides can be found HERE.
We were incredibly honoured that at the May 12th conference 2019 Dr. Byron Hyde not only gave a wonderful and incredibly informative presentation but was also our Keynote Speaker. His video presentation and pdf slides can be found in the links below.
To see the videos and presentations from all our Speakers at the 2019 May event please see HERE.
You can learn more about Dr. Schwarzbach and his many years of experience HERE.
If you are concerned that an underlying infection may be contributing to your symptoms, you can find our Lyme Disease and Coinfections Checklist on the AONM Website.
To learn more about some of the tests ArminLabs/AONM offer please see the ARMINLABS tab on our website.
If you’d like to keep up to date with our upcoming events you can find them HERE.
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References:
[1] Berghoff W. Chronic Lyme Disease and Co-infections: Differential Diagnosis. Open Neurol J. 2012; 6: 158–178
[1] Shenkman, Louis & J Bottone, E. (1977). Antibodies to Yersinia enterocolitica in Thyroid Disease. Annals of internal medicine. 85. 735-9
[1] Chatzipanagiotou, Stylianos & Legakis, Ioannis & Boufidou, Fotini & Petroyianni, V & Nicolaou, C. (2001). Prevalence of Yersinia plasmid-encoded outer protein (YOP) class-specific antibodies in patients with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. Clinical microbiology and infection : the official publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. 7. 138-43
[1] Huang HI, Shih SR. Neurotropic Enterovirus Infections in the Central Nervous System. Viruses. 2015;7(11):6051-66.
[1] https://www.hfme.org/meoutbreakscause.htm
[1] Sinclair C, Gaunt E, Simmonds P, Broomfield D, Nwafor N, Wellington L, Templeton K, Willocks L, Schofield O, Harvala H. Atypical hand, foot, and mouth disease associated with coxsackievirus A6 infection, Edinburgh, United Kingdom, January to February 2014. Euro Surveill. 2014;19(12):pii=20745.
[1] http://www.me-foreningen.info/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/What-is-Myalgic-Encephalom-2017-4-16.pdf
[1] Xue, Y. C., Feuer, R., Cashman, N., & Luo, H. (2018). Enteroviral Infection: The Forgotten Link to Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis?. Frontiers in molecular neuroscience, 11, 63. doi:10.3389/fnmol.2018.00063
[1] Woodall CJ et al. Sequences specific for enterovirus detected in spinal cord from patients with motor neurone disease BMJ. 1994 Jun 11; 308(6943): 1541–1543.
[1] Ingram WM, Goodrich LM, Robey EA, Eisen MB (2013) Mice Infected with Low-Virulence Strains of Toxoplasma gondii Lose Their Innate Aversion to Cat Urine, Even after Extensive Parasite Clearance. PLoS ONE 8(9): e75246
[1] Stock AK, Dajkic D, Köhling HL, von Heinegg EH, Fiedler M, Beste C. Humans with latent toxoplasmosis display altered reward modulation of cognitive control. Sci Rep. 2017;7(1):10170. Published 2017 Aug 31.
[1] Fallon, B. A., & Nields, J. A. (1994). Lyme disease: A neuropsychiatric illness. The American Journal of Psychiatry, 151(11), 1571-1583.
[1] Unraveling Diagnostic Uncertainty Surrounding Lyme Disease in Children with Neuropsychiatric Illness Koster, Michael P. et al. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , 27 – 36
[1] Nicolson, G., et al. Diagnosis and Integrative Treatment of Intracellular Bacterial Infections in Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Syndromes, Gulf War Illness, Rheumatoid Arthritis and other Chronic Illnesses. Clin Prac of Alt Med 2000;1(2): 92-102
[1] Op Cit: Berghoff W. Chronic Lyme Disease and Co-infections
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15617845; http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/0306-9877(88)90023-0/abstract
[1] http://www.davidwheldon.co.uk/ms-treatment1.html
[1] Itzhaki, R, Lathe, R, Balin, BJ, Ball, MJ, Bearer, EL, Braak, H, Bullido, MJ, Carter, C, Clerici, M, Cosby , SL, Del Tredici, K, Field, H, Fulop, T, Grassi, C, Griffin, WST, Haas, J, Hudson, AP, Kamer, AR, Kell, D, Licastro, F, Letenneur, L, Lovheim, H, Mancuso, R, Miklossy, J, Otth, C, Palamara, AT, Perry, G, Preston, C, Pretorius, E, Strandberg, T, Tabet, N, Taylor-Robinson, SD & Whittum-Hudson, JA 2016, ‘Microbes and Alzheimer’s Disease‘, Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 979.
[1] Kumar, Deepak Kumar Vijaya et al. “Amyloid-β peptide protects against microbial infection in mouse and worm models of Alzheimer’s disease.” Science translational medicine vol. 8,340 (2016): 340ra72. doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aaf1059
[1] Op cit. Itzhaki
