JMC - not really sure how many treatment naive patients AMAT has been tested on, but an arm of the RedHill study is going to look at AMAT in that group, so I guess we'll see. From one interview Prof. Borody gave a couple of years back, he said he had an 80% remission rate with AMAT and a 100% remission rate in treatment naive patients. Maybe he had only tested these 8 at that point, so who knows what those stats would be now, but from the patients of his that I've talked to, they seem pretty pleased with their care.
Penguin - RedHill is doing the study that will answer your first question about the success rate of AMAT in patients who have had prior therapies. Dr. Chamberlin told me he has 50% remission, 70% improvement, and as above, Prof. Borody has 80% remission. All anecdotal unpublished stats, but hopefully we will begin to see some of the double blind, larger studies to figure this out.
In my case I had had just about all of the other traditional CD therapies and AMAT still worked amazingly to give me full healing. I've been fine for two years now. I think from what Prof. Borody says in his intro, any treatment that may have an effect on MAP could cause the persistant state, making it harder to eradicate in the future. John Aitken's research find different hMAP forms for treatment naive patients vs. long term patients. For example in my case, I had predominantly persistant forms that were dormant. These seem harder to kill. Treatment naive patients seem to have large forms and few persistors that are easier to kill. Which would make sense with this latest research. Also, not sure about which type of CD is works on best. One research per told me once that he thought that the presence of fistulas corroborated hMAP involvement, but I'm hoping with better diagnosics CD patients will eventually be routinely tested at their first onset/flare and if they have hMAP be treatted accordingly.
Xeridea - exactly. And the stress is treatments used in CD that have partial effectiveness against MAP or antibiotics used for something unrelated to CD. I've been told the persistant/dormant state is a bit harder to kill. They told me I will likely never be fully rid of it since it's had 25 years to gain a foothold. Who knows what will happen in the future though, but this type of research path is promising. The more groups that look at this, the more we'll know.
