Dr Speciani resolves keratitis by identifying reactivity to diet and microbes

[littlemermaid]

http://ht.ly/c27SZ Recurrent ocular inflammation may benefit from a nutritional treatment approach, Ocular Surgery News, July 5, 2012, ROME — Recurrent severe keratitis and other forms of ocular inflammation may be food related and could benefit from a nutritional approach to treatment, according to an immunologist speaking here.

At the joint Refractive.online and SICCSO meeting, Attilio Francesco Speciani, MD, presented the case of a 7-year-old girl referred for recurrent keratitis and severe symptoms for more than 3 years that did not respond to conventional treatment.

Speciani measured the girl’s levels of B cell-activating factor, platelet-activating factor, toll-like receptor 2 and other cytokines that are specific markers of food-related inflammation.

“Once we found that this was the root of the problem, we put the girl on a specific diet where fermented foods and nickel-containing foods were initially excluded and then gradually reintroduced in a way similar to the weaning process. We also administered the oral immune therapy using a low-dose tolerance inducer against house dust mites to reduce the overall reactivity and not only the allergen-specific reaction,” Speciani said.

The keratitis promptly began to resolve, and the girl recovered fully by 3 months.

[spmcc]

“Once we found that this was the root of the problem, we put the girl on a specific diet where fermented foods and nickel-containing foods were initially excluded and then gradually reintroduced in a way similar to the weaning process. We also administered the oral immune therapy using a low-dose tolerance inducer against house dust mites to reduce the overall reactivity and not only the allergen-specific reaction,” Speciani said.

OMG, fermented foods are what rosaceans are supposed to avoid. For example, beer, wine, cider, vinegars (anything that contains vinegar - mayo, salad dressings, ketchup, mustard, pickles, olives, marinades, sauces, most condiments), yogurt, cheese, some breads, soy sauce, sauerkraut, chocolate, vanilla, tabasco, and on and on! All of those things are fermented.

As for foods that contain nickel - I'm going to have to look that up.

I've been trying to avoid rosacea food triggers. It's difficult!

[littlemermaid]

Hmm. I think rosacea triggers must be individual. How he identified specifics I'd really like to know. It's difficult for us to even identify what's causing problems. The gluten trigger was a surprise for us too. Note he found the environmental allergens. The key must be in the inflammatory over-reaction. For rosacea, this includes sunlight and stress response, of course. Presumably, after exclusion, some components could be reintroduced in small amounts to desensitise, like they can do with allergy. Despite the obvious reservations, it's difficult to deny that food triggers are affecting LM's rosacea skin and eyes.

Maybe what we ingest feeds the microbiota and dictates the health of our immune response Human Microbiome Project. This is one beautiful and fascinating project - we are a universe in ourselves. I think a problem with investigating eyes is that we can't get inside the environment without risk although I don't see why they can't express the meibom and look at tears to find the bugs. Especially with recalcitrant mgd. The project has new techniques beyond culturing http://www.hmpdacc.org/tools_protoco..._protocols.php.

Although, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18422288 'Perhaps what matters in some diseases is not the particular type of bug, but that the function of this group of bugs has somehow gone awry, Dr Huttenhower says. Researchers found that healthy volunteers carry low levels of microbes, classically thought to cause disease. For example, the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which can be involved in the infection MRSA, was found in the noses of about 30 percent. We now have a phone-book of 100 of these bugs, which in the right environment, have the potential to go bad. We know where they live in healthy people and which organisms surround them too. So perhaps we can begin to understand what keeps them in check and where their reservoirs are," says Dr Curtis Huttenhower from the Harvard School of Public Health.'

Immunology animations and autoimmunity lectures on YouTube are a good start if anyone's thinking about things that way. I wish our individual immune responses could be mapped.

I still think that esp with eg skin or post-viral autoimmune problems, chronic low-grade inflammation could be due to response to unidentifed pathogens, dermatophytes, bacteria. So there are various ways of reducing these like oral antibiotics, antifungals, topicals, also maybe diet. But I'm not seeing why samples can't be examined for these under the microscope, esp in surface disease.

NB this is just mulling on looking for chronic hypersensitivity inflammation triggers. Most important is finding an eye doctor for conventional advice. Please no one suffer in desperation on an exclusion diet without a plan - 100% for sure, improving diet and enjoying good food is very healing.

[spmcc]

The Economist magazine's recent issue (Aug 18, 2012) is all about the human microbiome project.

Some excerpts:

A disrupted microbiome has been associated with a lengthening list of problems: obesity and its opposite, malnutrition; diabetes (both type-1 and type-2); atherosclerosis and heart disease; multiple sclerosis; asthma and eczema; liver disease; numerous diseases of the intestines, including bowel cancer; and autism. The details are often obscure, but in some cases it looks as if bugs are making molecules that help regulate the activities of human cells. If these signals go wrong, disease is the consequence. This matters because it suggests doctors have been looking in the wrong place for explanations of these diseases. It also suggests a whole new avenue for treatment. If an upset microbiome causes illness, settling it down might effect a cure (from Microbes maketh man).

That bacteria can cause disease is no revelation. But the diseases in question are. Often, they are not acute infections of the sort 20th-century medicine has been so good at dealing with (and which have coloured doctors’ views of bacteria in ways that have made medical science slow to appreciate the richness and relevance of people’s microbial ecosystems). They are, rather, the chronic illnesses that are now, at least in the rich world, the main focus of medical attention. For, from obesity and diabetes, via heart disease, asthma and multiple sclerosis, to neurological conditions such as autism, the microbiome seems to play a crucial role (from Me, myself, us)

[littlemermaid]

Beautiful. Spmcc, you are fabulous. How fascinating is that. Now we're all wondering how sub-clinical dose oral antibiotics work on mgd.

[unicorn]

Thank you spmcc. I am actually on the waiting list to see a gastro-entorologist because I have several longstanding, 'mild', chronic illnesses. I am starting to wonder if they're all linked, eyes included, to something in the gut. My GP mentioned testing for H-pylori last time I saw her, too. While the link between that and rosacea is disputed, it is certainly often mentioned. Fascinating that so many other serious diseases could be looked at from a microbiome perspective.