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A Regime for Antiretroviral Treatment of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
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===Dosage=== First, on the unusual handling of dosage, one of the two pillars of my therapy concept. In other retroviral infections, [[ART]] is usually started at the full dose that is maintained as long as the patient tolerates the drug well and no resistancies develop. This approach does not seem to work well for severely ill ME patients - according to our experience. The patient who is responding to the drug then does make extremely rapid progress, but also experiences unbearable side effects at the immunological and neurological levels, which eventually force him to discontinue therapy. Subsequently, all progress disappears relatively quickly again, so that the patient is soon as bad as before or - in the case of a progressive course of the disease - increasingly worse again. In contrast to [[HIV]]-infected individuals, in which the illness has usually not yet fully broken out when they start treatment, in a severely ill person with ME the full picture of the illness is already apparent. This is probably why these patients are more likely to develop an immune reconstitution syndrome ([[IRIS]]) when starting therapy, just like previously untreated [[HIV]]-infected patients who have already developed AIDS. In the latter, very low CD4 cell counts, a high viral load prior to commencement of therapy and rapid decrease thereof under treatment seem to be predictors of [[IRIS]]. This could be similar in ME patients. [[IRIS]] is marked by an aggravation of the infectious or inflammatory process, induced by the start of treatment with [[ART]]. Regeneration of the immune system reveals latent infections, which often could not be identified or objectivized beforehand, and may cause severe immunological and neurological symptoms. This is especially applicable for the severely ill who begin treatment at full dosage. Slow, low dose introduction of drugs and dietary supplements is recommended for ME anyway, and it is apparent that the severely ill ME patient's organism will also need to gradually get accustomed to [[ART]] in order to avoid severe side effects that could lead to discontinuation of therapy. The basis for the idea of an unorthodox approach to dosage was the certainty that [[gamma- retroviruses]] found in the blood of ME patients by some researchers - unlike HI viruses - replicate only very slowly (cf. my book). That is why - these were my thoughts - resistancies cannot develop as quickly. It was probably a hitherto unique experiment which we started, and it was associated with great risk, because no doctor and no scientist could tell us for sure whether a resistance would not in fact develop when starting at a low dose. To my knowledge, none of the few ME patients who undergo ART had tried this before. But our experiment was worth it, because it shas been successful. However, it is important to know that, according to Dr. Mikovits, one can only start with a low dose if there is no acute co-infection, e.g. because of the risk of resistance emergence. If an acute co- infection is present, it is probably advisable to fight it first and/or to enter [[ART]] at full dose, whereas however side effects, as explained, can turn out violently in severely ill patients.
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