Antibiotic Therapy for Systemic Scleroderma

Background The concept of using antibiotics to treat Scleroderma stems from research done initially by Thomas M Brown, MD at the National Institutes of Health, Johns Hopkins and the Rockefeller Institute. Brown used antibiotic therapy to treat a variety of autoimmune diseases based on the theory that arthritic diseases, including Scleroderma, are caused by mycoplasma or bacterial infections. Mycoplasmas are essentially bacteria without cell walls and are the smallest complete free-living cellular organisms. Some forms of mycoplasma are known to be the cause of so-called “walking pneumonia”. While mycoplasmas are often found in healthy individuals, when someone’s immune system is compromised, as can occur with long-standing Lyme disease, for example, mycoplasma and other co-infections are my likely to contribute to systemic problems such as autoimmune diseases.