My sister had RA in her early twenties. For years no treatment was able to restore a reasonable quality of life. There were many side effects which needed treatment as well. She went from doctor to doctor, while she lost the best parts of her life.

An unexpected path led her to a tropical diseases doctor who had positive results with RA patients by using an unconventional treatment not supported by mainstream medicine at the time: He tested the patients blood for bacteria (by cultivation in a lab) and prescribed an antibiotic course that matched the detected bacteria. This treatment (testing + prescribing antibiotic)was repeated in regular intervals over the course of a whole year.

Her RA flare-ups stopped and recurred only in ever longer intervals which were arrested by this treatment. After a year the progression of the RA had stopped.

This treatment is controversial because it is considered bad practice to prescribe antibiotics liberally, for several good reasons. Mainstream medicine did not have a theoretical foundation to justify this treatment path.

The tropical disease doctor founded his treatment on the empirical research by some research factions that the “auto-immune” theory of RA was not showing the full picture.