Mycoplasma for dummies!

amother

Thu, Aug 15 2024, 6:30 pm

I’m sooo frustrated. It’s been a roller coaster of a year!
DS age 9 has been a self confident, yummy, smart boy until the age of 7. At that age we slowly started getting calls that he’s doodling and disturbing and not learning. Then slowly we started seeing behavioral changes at home also.
In January of this year my pediatrician told me she believes it’s ADHD why don’t I get him evaluated and on meds? I started doing research on the whole ADHD and the symptoms totally made sense. I contacted who she referred (Dr Hassan). Of course he said, yes classic ADHD and thats how we found him on meds. We long switched away from him to a different psychiatrist office and have been experimenting with different meds for 8 months now. The meds worked for maybe the first 3 weeks. Since then it’s been a disaster! He’s been way worst than before with an added depression to his personality!He keeps saying he’s sad and feels worthless.
Recently I started questioning the whole ADHD diagnosis. Cuz he was such a good confident smart and well rounded kid until the age of 7! Who would this come so suddenly! Before the summer he developed a crazy tic with head movements. I took him to ped for bloodwork and his mycoplasma numbers were at 2300!
Pediatrician seems to not be a major believer in the whole mycoplasma /pandas thing. She gave him a zpac for 5 days and that was the end of it. When I told her his symptoms are not gone and that I’m questioning the whole ADHD diagnosis she sent me for a MRI of the brain.
I simply feel this is all mycoplasma/pandas! Numbers of 2300 sounds crazy elevated to me!
I’m just so confused cuz ADHD and Pandas have literally the same symptoms. How do I choose between the two and decide which treatment method I’m following!
In the mycoplasma world alone I’m seeing so many mixed opinions about what helps. If it’s antibiotics resistant or not and all that!

amother

Ivory

Thu, Aug 15 2024, 6:37 pm

Mycoplasma is one of the most common triggers for PANS, which is basically pandas but caused by infections other than strep. Pandas and pans share a lot of symptoms with adhd (and ocd and asd and a lot of other psychiatric diagnoses).

The good news is you don't have to "choose". Because a psych diagnosis is based on a constellation of symptoms. There can be many causes for those symptoms, chronic infections being one of them. So he can have adhd, with the cause being mycoplasma.

The best way to know if mycoplasma is causing his symptoms is to treat the infection and also the inflammation aggressively, and see if the behaviors improve. If your doctor doesn't want to help you with this, you need to find another one.

flyakite

Thu, Aug 15 2024, 6:55 pm

My son's numbers have been has high as 2600 in 2020. He also developed a tic which precipitated his mycoplasma diagnosis. He got treated with zithromax for two weeks and tic b"h resolved. But he still had issues with extreme sillyness, explosive behavior, being all over the place, etc. At age 9 I treated with doxycycline for several months. This, along with ongoing treatment by his chiropractor switching between different herbs and supplements for a good number of months / years, along with testing and treating for pinworms at least twice along the way, and he's b"h in a much better place. Glad to be of help of I can.