A Solution to Resistant Tuberculosis?

Has the medical publishing world overlooked significant research on Resistant Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS?

Many attempts to treat Tuberculosis are marked in our history books. It seems logical that the publication for the AMA would have published Dr. Lieb's nine reviews on the immunostimulating and antimicrobial properties of lithium and antidepressants, and they hope they offer for TB, HIV and even Malaria, but they did not. He went ahead and published them in 1981. Photo: bikupan.se

(BURLINGTON, Vt.) - In the late nineteen forties, physicians caring for tuberculotics noticed that some of their patients had increased mental and physical energy compared to others. When they studied their charts, they discovered that the energized were taking either iproniazid or isoniazid, both monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).

Until then, no one realized that depression could be treated with pills.

A new generation of MAOIs was synthesized, among them Parnate, Nardil, Marplan and Eutonyl, and introduced for the treatment of depression and high blood pressure. In 1981, I published the first of nine reviews on the immunostimulating and antimicrobial properties of lithium and antidepressants, but not before rejection by the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, the British Medical Journal and Nature Medicine.

Immunostimulation is relevant to all infectious disorders, to primary immunodeficiency disorders, to bioterrorism, pandemic influenza, and cancer.

Provide African children coinfected with HIV, T.B and malaria with an antidepressant/immunostimulant at negligible cost, and the odds are that it will restore many to good health. The tuberculosis bacillus is said to be resisting standard anti- tuberculosis therapy, and T.B outbreaks are forecast.

Two crucial factors have been overlooked.

The MAOI used for T.B stimulates immune function, unnoticed because immunostimulation is thought to be unavailable. Secondly, it is not uncommon for people taking antidepressants to become immune to them. The overriding virtue of an immunostimulant, over an HIV or H5N1 vaccine, is that immunostimulation is non- specific, and vaccines highly specific. With HIV known to be mutating rapidly, a stimulated immune system might well ambush any strain.

Every antidepressant is an immunostimulant, the clinical challenge matching immunostimulant to patient, which may require trial and error. Antidepressants are said to act slowly, a popular myth without substance. While they make take weeks to be effective, they may also take only hours or days.

Generally speaking, one should not allow antidepressants to overstay their welcome, especially when faced with a rapidly deteriorating situation.

For the co-infected with “resistant’ tuberculosis, switching from isoniazid to another antidepressant could have the added virtue of suppressing HIV, and suppressing or even destroying malaria.

That would be a worthy question on which to invest research money.