Babesia Microti is the form of Babesia that we have known about the longest. Because Babesia is a red blood cell parasite and shares many characteristics with malaria, much of the strategy towards tackling Babesia is taken from Malaria protocols. Indeed the top medications for Malaria are derived from the herb “Artemesia” aka “Wormwood”. We will talk more about how to help people recover from Babesia in a different article, but in short Artemesia based protocols tend to work very well (in general) for Babesia Microti cases. This is in contrast to the more recently discovered Babesia Duncani which does not respond as well to “classic” Malaria/Babesia drugs or the herbal Artemesia based protocols. Dr. Daniel Cameron, MD (former president of ILADS – Internation Lyme and Associated Disease Society – notes the lack of response of Babesia Duncani to the traditional Malaria/Babesia medical approach in several interviews and articles. Because B. Microti and B. Duncani do not respond to the same meds, it is vital to have different strategies for the different types of Babesia.

The difficulty in Babesia direct testing like PCR, is that Babesia is typically in capillary beds…thus blood draws taken from the veins are typically negative for a PCR test. There are some doctors pushing for PCR tests from ear or finger pricks in order to get capillary blood for a sample, but this is still not a normal procedure. We have found a combination of the antibody, PCR, and indirect tests to be most useful in our office.

 Important points to remember from this article are: