Lyme disease, caused by a tick-borne spirochaete of the Borrelia species, is associated with facial palsy and, in acute Lyme, gastroparesis
Antibiotic use in early life and throughout life “favours an intestinal microbiota composition which might be a risk factor for ME/CFS” (Konig et al., 2022). Clinically, I also find this to be a highly common pattern in patients with stealth infections especially those with lengthy and difficult recoveries. This finding was borne out by the discovery by Morissette et al, 2020 that 80% of post-treatment Lyme patients with ongoing symptoms, including neurocognitive problems, have a distinctive gut microbiome ’signature’. This was independent of whether and how long patients had been on antibiotic therapy.
In the COVID-19 pandemic’s early days, integrative medicine specialists Gordon Saxe, MD, PhD, MPH, and Andrew Shubov, MD, watched in frustration as desperate patients infected with the novel coronavirus tried one ineffective remedy after another.