You are, of course, correct. In my too quick reading of your post, I missed that important point.
Thank you for your response. I am a bit confused though. If is isn infection, why would stopping the drugs like Crestor fix the problems? And would it be wise to seek ABx treatement even if the symptoms are gone since I stopped the Cretstor and other meds?
Thanks for your time. Your help is greatly appreciated!!!!
Chronic intracellular bacterial infections, such as Mycoplasma, Chlamydia, etc. cause atypical vasculitis, so the results may not be exactly the same as classical vasculitis. Such infections are systemic and usually other symptoms are also present. These can be anything from arthritis to glandular infections (thyroid or thyroiditis, pancreas or pancreatitis, etc.). They also commonly cause peripheral neuropathy, which could explain your pain and skin sensations. They often present as autoimmune disorders because the nature of these infections stimulate concomitant immune responses that also appear as autoimmune responses against normal antigens that are carried on the surfaces of these microorganisms when they leave cells or 'mimicry' antigens used to escape immune detection.
Interestingly, in some of these infections (in particular, the cell wall deficient forms) pennicilin based Abx usually cause the symptoms to worsen. This is not the usual Herxheimer or die-off reactions (primarily due to inflammatory cytokine release) that usually pass within days to weeks, but a real explosion in severe symptoms. Switching to another Abx usually solves this problem.
Our experience in such situations is that Abx therapy is slow and gradual (after an initial Herxheimer phase that makes symptoms initially worse).
You are, of course, completely correct. I did miss that in drafting my rapid response.