This is the news:  In England, possible antibioticsi to be sold over the counter, to treat CHLAMYDIA!

This is the story form http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/06/health

Oral antibiotics are to be made available for the first time without doctor's prescription under guidelines approved yesterday by the medicines regulator.

A pill to treat chlamydia, the most commonly diagnosed sexually transmitted infection, will become available for purchase in pharmacies across England later this year.

                             TABLE 11
    Serological and PCRi Responses to Combination Antibiotic Therapy
                                   Months of
                                  Combination
    Pa-                 Titer     Antibiotic 

I've recently suggested to two different people that they go and have PCRi tests for Cpni performed on a sample of their blood.  I'm a bit concerned that maybe I shouldn't have suggested the test because I lead them to believe that the test would give them infallible results as to whether or not they have a Cpn infection.  Is that true or not true?

I read something posted here somewhere about the dependability of other testing approaches like micro immunoflorescence (sp?), I believe.  I know that some of the other testing methods aren't very dependable.  What I'm wondering is how PCR testing shapes up by comparison.  Is it a realiable diagnostic approach as opposed to an empirical trial with NACi or one of the bacteriostatics?

Thanks,

John

Hi guys,

I'm about to do a PCRi sputum test and I'd like to maximize my chances of testing positive for CPni. Any tips??

Just for reference I have an active respiratory infection with CPn - including lungs, sinuses and throat. I get plenty of nasal discharge (thin mucous), but don't seem to produce much of anything from the lungs.

many thanks,

Garcia.

I don't believe we have this linked to our Research Pages (Marie?). This is a brilliant dissertation from the Finnish group, some of the world's experts on Cpni as some of the faculty in Helsinki were part of the original group who discovered the very existence of Cpn.

This dissertation demonstrates a number of important findings:

• Repeated infection with Cpn "...induced persistent chlamydial DNA and inflammationi in lung tissue and development of mouse Hsp60 autoantibodies."
• Repeated infection with Cpn "...significantly increased subendothelial lipid accumulation in the aortic sinus area."
• That "A flavonoid, luteolin, was shown to effectively decrease the chlamydial load and inflammatory reactions in lung tissue." Note: luteolin is not the same as lutein.
  
• Conventional antimicrobial treatments are not effectively to eradicate persistent infection.

Experimental Chlamydia pneumoniae infection model: effects of repeated inoculations and treatment

Liisa Törmäkangas

Lääketieteellinen tiedekunta, Oulun yliopisto

Here is a link to a detailed and technical paper on PCRi analysis that evaluates and outlines the problem with culturing CPn and the variations in abilities in different labs. It also talks about the results of split samples and concordance between some PCR approaches and discordance with others. Though this is highly technical, it answers the question of how can it be that there are still some researchers producing papers saying, for example, that they tested patients with MSi for CPn and found the incidence to be no higher than controls, such as this article here but note that this one used antibody tests, a ridiculously ineffective way of looking for CPn in cryptic form in the brain.

J. B. Mahony,1,2,* S. Chong,1 B. K. Coombes,1 M. Smieja,1 and A. Petrich1,2
Hamilton Regional Laboratory Medicine Program, St. Joseph's Hospital,1 and Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, McMaster University,2 Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Link here

Received 18 January 2000/Returned for modification 31 March 2000/Accepted 4 May 2000

Chlamydia pneumoniae has been associated with atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease (CAD), and its DNA has been detected in atheromatous lesions of the aorta, carotid, and coronary arteries by a variety of PCRi assays. The objective of this study was to compare the performances of five published PCR assays in the detection of C. pneumoniae in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from patients with coronary artery disease.