IBS + BioNTech COVID Vaccine -> ME/CFS?

A reader request a review of his results:

I am a 26 year old male living in Germany. I have a M. Sc. iIn 2018, I did a semester abroad in St. Petersburg, Russia, and during the exam period got IBS. I think stress and/ or vegan diet, which I only tried for a few months, played a role. Extremely low Vitamin D was found, but nothing else.

I developed a lot of food intolerances since then.

In April 2021 I got a Biontech vaccination, and in the following days, noticed that I was tired all the time. It did not get better. I was barely able to finish my Masters Thesis as it was almost finished, but could not start working. Long story short, I now have a lot of the common CFS symptoms, additionally my hair fell out and low testosterone was found.

From a reader

Some technical notes: It cannot be diagnosed as CFS because it has not lasted long enough. It can be viewed as post-immune reaction syndrome. Second, I too have concerns about post-immune reaction syndrome this year, to explain why:

  • Three COVID 19 vaccinations
  • Tetanus vaccination
  • Pneumonia vaccination
  • Two Singles vaccinations

After each, I saw my system “act up”, Some measurable — such as a jump in blood pressure that took a couple of weeks to calm down. More often, i was dragging for a couple of weeks. Night Sweats. skin inflammation, etc.

To Vac or Not to Vac — that is really not the question. It is equivalent to saying “I will not wear a seat belt in case the car plunges into a lake and traps me in the car” The risk of that happening is very low compare to the risk of not wearing a seat belt. There is no rationality that can supported by rational analysis.

Some studies showing that vaccination does alter the microbiome.

Human studies have likely not been done because they will be misused by “anti-vaccination” people. We can be confident that changes will happen. The nature of the change will depend on the prior state of the microbiome – an unstudied area. The change from each vaccine will likely be different.

I should mention that I have read several personal reports of major improvement of microbiome conditions as a result of vaccination. A percentage may go either way.

Where do we go from here?

We have 3 sets of microbiome changers – stress, IBS and vaccination. Food intolerance was something of interest — alas, I could not find anything on PubMed that identifies bacteria associated with it. Doing a quick scan of my Biome View, nothing really stood out.

Doing Due Diligence

Kaltoft-Moltrup Ranges

This produces a list FULL of unusual supplements… and a few familar. This is the first time that I have ever seen   lactobacillus bulgaricus appear in the to add list. Some of my personal preferences (from experience with ME/CFS) are there:   glycyrrhizic acid (licorice), Slippery Elm,triphala and quercetin,resveratrol

My general impression is that our list of usual suspects is really not there,

Time to Beat the Bushes

KEGG Generated Suggestions

The Weights were all below 20 — i.e. marginal, with Sun Wave Pharma/Bio Sun Instant, being the best of the short list

Similarly the supplement list was short at 10%ile and none at 5%ile

  • beta-alanine
  • D-Ribose
  • L-Histidine
  • Molybdenum

Compounds Produced and Consumed Page

Looking at the new Compounds Produced and Consumed, there were a number of items that had high ( > 99%ile) production – with 600 items listed, we would have expected just 6 (1%) not 41!!:

  1. ADP
  2. all-trans-Heptaprenyl diphosphate
  3. 5′-Deoxyadenosine
  4. 5-Phospho-alpha-D-ribose 1-diphosphate
  5. Acetaldehyde
  6. AMP
  7. CO2
  8. Diphosphate
  9. Fumarate
  10. Menaquinol
  11. NADH
  12. NADPH
  13. S-Adenosyl-L-homocysteine
  14. UDP
  15. Uracil
  16. Arsenite
  17. H+
  18. N-Acylsphingosine
  19. Xanthine
  20. Acetoacetyl-CoA
  21. Acyl-carrier protein
  22. D-Amino acid
  23. Protein lysine
  24. Protein-L-arginine
  25. (3S)-3,6-Diaminohexanoate
  26. 5-Methylthio-D-ribose
  27. Acetyl phosphate
  28. Alcohol
  29. D-Xylulose 5-phosphate
  30. Glycyl-tRNA(Gly)
  31. N-Formimino-L-glutamate
  32. Orthophosphate
  33. (S)-4,5-Dihydroxypentane-2,3-dione
  34. L-Sorbose
  35. N-Acetyl-beta-D-mannosaminyl-1,4-N-acetyl-D-glucosaminyldiphosphoundecaprenol
  36. 6-Deoxy-L-galactose
  37. Protoporphyrin
  38. tRNA
  39. D-Mannose 1-phosphate
  40. Spermidine
  41. Glycolate

In terms of consumers, the highest percentile was 75.3%ile, In fact most of the consumed items appear ‘balanced’

Proposed Model

Because events were recent, we have high volatility in the microbiome’s bacteria. I saw similar at the start of my relapse… the various clans of bacteria are fighting each other with short term victors of one group and then a reversal.

The apparent issue is massive overproduction of compounds!!! How to address that may mean that I need to add more code to identify the key bacteria responsible and thus the page changed as shown below. This is a logical but experimental novel approach.

The result is shown below:

Next I checked the highest numbers to create a Hand Picked list

The result is show below. None were very high by themselves, Five were around 75%ile

I removed everything below 50%

From this hand pick selection, we proceed to get suggestions. The results are shown below

and the to-avoid

This looks similar to what I often see with ME/CFS people. That is, breakfast porridge made from barley with inulin and wheat bran with walnuts (which is my own regular breakfast!) with yogurt containing lactobacillus plantarum. There are some interesting studies in this area:

Additional Lab Results from User

After getting to this point, the reader reported some recent lab results. Some are of interest:

  • Vitamin D was just 28% into the normal range, so the vitamin D suggestion above is reasonable
  • His coagulation factor II (G20210A/G) was at the high end of normal — I have the same coagulation issue and found that turmeric with black pepper or piracetam helps greatly — especially with brain fog and slowness.
  • Protein S was low (barely in normal range), See Protein S deficiency

Issues causing hypercoagulation (thick blood) was shown to be common with ME/CFS by David Berg back in 1999, for articles and townhall transcripts (hosted by me!) see this page. This appears of part of this person’s causality.

Neither G20210A nor Protein S are likely to be deemed clinically significant, thus my personal preference (regular heparin taken sublingual, held for 1 minute and then spitted out) is unlikely to be prescribed.

For ways of addressing these, see my CFS Remission blog.

The COVID Vaccine Overtones

Prior to my getting my first COVID vaccine, I had concerns about it triggering coagulation – an ongoing ME/CFS risk. The reason was simple, vaccines triggers an immune reaction — milder than having COVID — but still an immune reaction. COVID was at that time, well known to produce coagulation issues (Abnormal coagulation parameters are associated with poor prognosis in patients with novel coronavirus pneumonia April 2020) so they was a risk. The severity would likely be far less than that of COVID, but still enough to push someone with borderline coagulation issue across into ME/CFS. This appears to be correct as shown by some studies, a few are:

This also is suspected with Long COVID,

Bottom Line

The microbiome is just a part of a health analysis, a significant part but far from being complete. We have a model for the tiredness. IMHO, non-prescription anti-coagulation treatments may eliminate it over a few months.

We are going to do two approaches that are connected.

  • Coagulation — which appears to be caused by the bacteria of concern (a topic that I cover on CFS Remission)
  • Bacteria — the ones that appear to be causing over production of many compounds

Reducing some of the bacteria cited above will likely also help, since many are known to cause coagulation:

  • “These results indicated that Bacteroides sp. and F. mortiferum can accelerate blood coagulation in vivo ” [1973]
  • “Bacteroides fragilis, Bacteroides vulgatus, and Fusobacterium mortiferum …. demonstrate that LPS of selected gram-negative anaerobes activate HF and thereby initiate the intrinsic pathway of coagulation.” [1984]
  • Interaction of Bacteroides fragilis and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron with the kallikrein-kinin system [2011]
    • “Bacteroides fragilis and Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, were found to bind HK and fibrinogen, the major clotting protein, “
  • Unhappy Triad: Infection with Leptospira spp. Escherichia coli and Bacteroides uniformis Associated with an Unusual Manifestation of Portal Vein Thrombosis [2021]

Some questions from reader:

  • “The only probiotic I will add is lactobacillus plantarum. (Or also lactobacillus rhamnosus gg?) I will have to rotate that. Here is the question: I would also like to address IBS. I read on cfsremission that some probiotics, like Prescript Assist, could lead to IBS remission. Prescript Assist was also 2nd place on the KEGG recommendations, although you said the weights were marginal. Would it be not unreasonable to try Prescript Assist at some point, to address IBS?“
    • Yes, I would suggest two-four weeks on a probiotic and then rotate to the other
  • “Does this plan sound reasonable?:
    • Continue to take: D-Ribose, Vitamin D, Coenzyme Q10, Multi-Minerals, Magnesiummalate, L-Carnitine
    • Discontinue: VSL3, Citrullinmalate, Vitamin C, Vitamin B12
    • Add: As many of the recommendations as possible from the Kaltoft-Moltrup suggestions, the KEGG recommended supplements, and the novel approach. Add anticoagulants.
    • After 2 months test again.
    • Yes, if sound very reasonable – track objective measurements as much as possible
  • New results IgA 1 is at 4500 with normal range 500-2000. This may be related to the vaccination but IgA is associated with a lot of things.

5 thoughts on “IBS + BioNTech COVID Vaccine -> ME/CFS?”

  1. Is it good to take the recommended herbs (triphala, licorice, slippery elm) in parallel with the probiotics, or first only the probiotics in rotation and after that only the herbs in rotation?

    1. There is no universal rule. Usually, I do herbs first and then probiotics. In terms of a war metaphor, the herbs are the artillery’s softening up the enemy, the probiotics are the troops charging in at the disorganized enemy.

  2. Pingback: Follow up Analysis for ME/CFS (After COVID) – Microbiome Prescription Blog
  3. Pingback: Repeat IBS + Vaccine + COVID – Microbiome Prescription Blog
  4. Pingback: Biomesight #4 Sample: IBS and COVID – Microbiome Prescription Blog

Comments are closed.