Emerging Co-infection: Chlamydia Pneumoniae
Chlamydia Pneumoniae, also known as CPN, is a fast emerging Lyme co-infection with very similar symptoms. In fact for some who remain very sick and have yet to receive a positive Lyme diagnosis, CPN is something that should definitely be tested for.
The following description was taken from a blog on www.cpnhelp.org the only CPN forum I could find. It is important to note the extreme similarities in symptoms, reaction to antibiotics and even the close association with Babesiosa.
Many who are familiar with both diseases have said, “It’s not a far stretch to insert CPN everywhere lyme/borrelia is inserted” Chlamydia Pneumoniae (Cpn) is a tiny bacterium which is most often noted for causing a form of pneumonia. Up until the 1970’s it was not even isolated and was mistaken for a virus (its discovery is an interesting story and can be found here: http://www.washington.edu/research/pathbreakers/1989a.html).
“It was not until 1989 that J. Thomas Grayston and his associates named it as a separate species of the Chlamydiae. Cpn is very difficult to culture and so, without modern lab techniques, also to study. It is an intracellular bacterium, which means that it invades the body cells, and it is an obligate parasite, which means that it cannot supply it’s own energy source and so takes over the energy machinery of the body cells it invades, depleting them and leaving the host cell less functional.
“Cpn has been implicated in a wide variety of diseases and is seen by some researchers as a causal factor in particular disease such as Multiple Sclerosis, Chronic Fatigue, Asthma, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Fibromyalgia, Chronic Refractory Sinusitis, Cardiac disease, Interstitial Cystitis, Prostatitis, Alzheimer’s disease, Crohn’s disease, Inflammatory Bowel disease, and others.”
CPN is also commonly accompanied by Secondary Porphyria and Micoplasma.
If you suspect you may have CPN or CPN complications, ask your doctor to test for PCR testing, especially that which is referred to as nested-PCR testing, is considered to have the highest sensitivity and to be most objective source of serology testing for Cpn.
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