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A new diagnosis of Mycobacterium abscessus
I’ve had BE and MAC for 3-4 years. I started on the big 3 last Spring but had to quit because of the terrible side effects.
A couple of weeks ago my sputum grew
Mycobacterium abscessus. I’d like to have anyone here who has been diagnosed with this to share their experience. Thank you!
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@nlee1954 MABC is a challenge to cure, difficult but my ID doc says not impossible. Let’s keep positive that we will be in the percentage of patients who overcome this bug!
@kathyjjb
I had to read it a couple of times about treating it with a virus. Do you know what virus, (maybe a dumb question)
@farfalina It's called "PHAGE" Therapy. Sorry, they are viruses but it's called phage. I did do a little research and learned that they are now only approved for those where antibiotics have not helped and the disease has seriously progressed. Not yet, FDA approved for standard treatment. I hope that in 5-10 years it will become standard treatment so that antibiotic treatment will be more successful.
@nlee1954 It's called Phage Therapy. All I know is that Companies are creating phage banks. The virus or phage would be specific to the exact genetic makeup of the NTM strain. Sounds like there's a lot of NTM variance if a "bank" of these phages need to be collected and stored. I did listen to a youtube presentation and the founder of one of the phage banks spoke about looking in the environment for these natural occurring phages.