There have been numerous "anecdotes" about this. Unfortunately, in the medico world, "anecdote" means "silly patient story" so they are dismissed.

A couple of years ago, Ron Hutton ran across a letter in an "Ask the Doc" column from a PWP who had gone to the emergency room with an abscessed tooth and had been given Penicillin VK. His symptoms totally disappeared within a couple of days and returned a couple of days after he ran out. The doc dismissed it out of hand.

The tetracyclines have long produced such stories, as well. In fact, a member of that family called minocycline has a good bit of research published on it.

There are a couple of questions to be answered. What is going on? The first thought is that some bacterium is causing the symptoms, but, if so, why don't more antibiotics produce results like this? Why hasn't someone been cured accidentally?

I suspect that the answer is a little more interesting. As I have posted from time to time, I believe the theory that we are hypersensitive to the bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) due to our having encountered it in the womb. Now as adults, the barest whiff of LPS wafting through our system makes our brain's microglial cells go berserk and start pumping out cytokines which, uncontrolled, do great damage in the long term and screw up our neurofunction in the short term.

If it isn't beating back bacteria, then what is the antibiotic doing that makes a difference in PD? Glad you asked!!

These antibiotics have another property of note- they bind LPS and render it harmless! That, in turn, allows the microglia to stand down. The antibiotics are acting as anti-inflammatories.

Some other things that support this- Remember how ibuprofen offers protection bt aspirin does not? Ibuprofen binds LPS but not aspirin.

And then there is cholesterol. Despite what Big Pharma wants us to believe, low cholesterol increases one's chance of getting PD. One reason is probably the fact that cholesterol is a component of the neuronal wall. But there is another- the body handles LPS by binding it to cholesterol for transport to the liver.

And, as Paul Harvey says if they pay him enough, "That's the rest of the story..."