alt Hacker NewsWhat I find most interesting about this story that antibiotics weren't given when the patient had persistent inflammation and a clear cause couldn't be identified. It seems like such a common low risk treatment just to try. Especially curious why auto immune was assumed instead.
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I don’t know the details of this story, but I had an illness, and tried some antibiotics with no success. After a whole bunch more tests they decided it was a bacterial infection which had buried itself deep in my digestive system somewhere, and killing it required Fluoroquinolone —- which causes serious tendon damage in many people who take it.
It cleaned up my infection, and I didn’t have any side effects —- but hard to shift illnesses can require significant amounts of antibiotics with significant side effects.
We don't actually know that they didn't try first-line antibiotics. My guess is that they did, and it's one of the things that didn't work. The UK is a bit cautious about causing antibiotic resistance, but my understanding is that that's more of an issue with long term use so may not be the determining factor here.
antibiotic resistance is such that it is increasingly less common to use it as just a "take 2 of these and call me in the morning" shot in the dark treatment.
Not to mention she swam in untreated water in the Amazon!!
Had this been in the US, good chance would have received doxycycline as first line treatment and the leptospirosis identified by metagenomic sequencing would have resolved
This surprised me also, till I realized the story was in the UK.
From my understanding it's much less common to get antibiotics in the UK vs US.
> In 2019, while still at medical school, Ellie began suffering from inflammation in her right eye. All tests for infection came back negative and it was assumed she had an autoimmune condition.
You know how everyone complains about antibiotic resistance? Yeah, they're not going to give some random antibiotic if they have no idea what something might be.
Good question. I started having digestive issues a year and a half ago. Went to various doctors and according to their lab tests was told everything was fine, that maybe this was my "new normal." Recently had an infection that necessitated broad spectrum antibiotics and magically my digestion issues have cleared up...
If not for getting sick recently I'd probably still be dealing with whatever gut infection I had that the doctors essentially ignored.