Seems like when doctors are confounded, then a course of strong antibiotics might be a good Hail Mary, targeting various types of bacteria. If there’s any signs of improvement then that’s a good piece of evidence to move forward in that direction.
This is multiple layers of uneducated and misguided. Apart from it being a bad idea on the surface, due to antibiotic resistance and wiping out healthy parts of the microbiome, many common antibiotics have anti-inflammatory effects separate from their antimicrobial effects: https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-7643-8550-7_7
Seeing someone improve after taking antibiotics is not indicative of them having an infection that’s being treated by the antibiotics.
> Seeing someone improve after taking antibiotics is not indicative of them having an infection
It could be. It is also not indicative of them not having an infection. It just depends.
As per my limited understanding, anti-inflammatory antibiotics are more relevant for respiratory and auto-immune conditions, not too broadly otherwise. If the source of the inflammation is not treated, the temporary reduction in inflammation is pointless because the inflammation will return.
If someone is suffering as badly as the people in the article and the doctors have no idea what is going on, then the benefit of taking antibiotics outweighs the risks.
You seem to forget that this patient is suffering. Having their gut biome wiped out is nothing compared to them chronically suffering as they are.
Random strong antibiotics are not a good idea. One could estimate the possible condition, then estimate the most targeted safe antibiotic, and take its full course correctly. Also, sometimes it's not a bacterial infection, and can be a viral/amoebic/parasitic/worm or in rare cases a fungal infection.
For example, in a specific case, for acute intestinal pain, amoxicilin with clav was being advised, but the etiology+location+correlations suggested that mere metronidazole alone would suffice, and it did. It's case by case.
You forget that the patient is chronically suffering and the doctors have no idea what is causing the suffering. The fact that it isn't a "good idea" doesn't outweigh the fact that it might be a bacterial infection that they don't detect, and if the doctors have no more ideas, then taking a course of wide spectrum antibiotics certainly has more benefits than risks.
Have you put all the symptoms and the patient's relevant history into GPT-5 (paid plan) to get possible diagnoses? Also, it may be an opportunity to do a lot of blood tests privately to see what they lead to. Sometimes it could be a viral or worm infection. Doctors generally miss out on a lot of tests, so it could be up to you to get them done. For the brain sometimes CSF tests are needed too. You really need to be prepared when you go to the doc, telling them which tests you want.
If you are truly convinced it's a bacterial infection, then you can use a broad spectrum antibiotic, e.g. amox+clav, which you can get on your own, but I would simultaneously take a probiotic twice daily to prevent the gut from getting colonized by bad microbiota, e.g. C diff. Even so, sometimes a different antibiotic is needed, e.g. doxycycline.
During the early months of Covid I had to take chloroquine. The point again is that no one medicine really is broad enough.
