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I thought I  pretty much knew all of the antibiotics at this point, especially the ones used to treat pouchitis.  I've been using several antibiotics in rotation for years with Flagyl working the best.  Well, yesterday, I started having some tingling in my fingers and toes so my doc told me to stop until we get some blood results back (B vitamins, folate, etc.) in case it's an accumulated effect from the Flagyl.

Long story short, my doc called in Alinia.  I have never heard of it and especially have not heard of anyone on J-Pouch using it.  For my pouchitis veterans out there...any thoughts?  I guess it's not technically an antibiotic but an antiprotozal.

Thanks!

Last edited by clz81
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Update on Alinia.  Well, it's mostly doing what it needs to be doing.  Doesn't work as well as Flagyl for me, but something I think I can use in rotation.  The label says that there aren't really side effects with this medicine, but I am experiencing two of them.  One being sleepiness and the other being nausea.  Word of caution, only take with a full meal...not a light snack or right before bed.  Otherwise, I pretty much feel like vomiting all day.  They do put that in big bold letters on the bottle...take after food.  

So, we'll see how it goes!  I'm sort of hoping that my bloodwork will come back with low iron or something, explaining the tingling, so I can go back to my Flagyl.

Got the last of my blood tests back.  Everything was normal til this one.  Just curious, do people people UC get positive ANA results?  The titer is kind of on the border so I'm interested to see what my doc has to say.   I really don't need to add Lupus to this mix!

Component Results

<colgroup><col /><col /><col /></colgroup>
ComponentYour ValueStandard Range
ANTI-NUCLEAR ABPositive  Negative
ANA Titer1:160   
Suggest Reflex Autoimmune Disease Panel (RXADP) be ordered. Specimen will be held in the laboratory for 2 weeks from date of this report. Please send a written request directly to Clinical Immunology. Fax (312)926-5419
Anti-Nuclear Antibody PatternHomogeneous   
Pattern 2Speckled   

General Information

Collected:

08/11/2016 8:40 AM

Resulted:

08/15/2016 5:57 PM

A positive ANA doesn't really suggest Crohn's, and it can often mean nothing. There's a nice Wikipedia article on it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_antibody

One quote: "A positive ANA test is seldom useful if other clinical or laboratory data supporting a diagnosis are not present." Another quote: "ANAs are found in many disorders, as well as some healthy individuals. These disorders include: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren's syndrome, scleroderma, polymyositis, dermatomyositis, primary biliary cirrhosis, drug induced lupus, autoimmune hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, discoid lupus, thyroid disease, antiphospholipid syndrome, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, juvenile dermatomyositis, idiopathic thrombocytopaenic purpura, infection and cancer. These antibodies can be subdivided according to their specificity, and each subset has different propensities for specific disorders."

So there are different subtypes of ANA, which are associated with different conditions, but ANA alone doesn't confirm a diagnosis. Why was the ANA ordered?

Thanks Scott....that's pretty much what I read online too.  My doc ordered it since I was having tingling in my toes and fingers.  Could have been medicine related or totally nothing, but he ordered a full panel of stuff.  I'm still waiting to hear back from him.  

I mentioned the Lupus because my grandma had it and I mentioned Crohn's, because I've had docs going back on forth UC vs. Crohn's for a while.  After my adhesion surgery when they got to look at everything inside, the surgeon said there was no evidence of Crohn's so I'm hoping that's still the case!

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