Microbes and sequestered substances as mechanisms for disease: Bartonella and L-forms as common global etiological agents.

The pathogenicity of microbes may be determined by substances sequestered from blood and bound to their constituent lipid. The brain may not perceive substances sequestered by microbes, to interfere with control to maintain normal levels. Pathological conditions can be induced as organisms exposed to antimicrobial substances/conditions and/or deprived of nutrients essential to cell wall synthesis, disintegrate to free lipid-bound compounds and produce L-forms that can deplete nutrients as they revert to bacteria. Microbes may act as active carriers for the continuing interaction of sequestered substances. Changes in the molecular structure of substances effected during sequesteration could cause them to be seen as substances 'synthesized' by an organism. In media that contain substances to inhibit 'contaminants', L-forms can be seen as mycoplasma. Elementary bodies of L-forms with a specific substance or tissue affinity may be seen as 'receptors'. Bartonella are global agents for disease--pleomorphic organisms (description suits Proteus)--and they can be seen as 'contaminants'.

Bartonellosis and human immunodeficiency disease (AIDS): L-forms as persisters, activating factors, and mechanism of disease.

Bartonella, genus Proteus, can cause immunodepressive disease. The organisms, in parasitized red blood cells, may invade the brain and every other system and space in the human body. Bartonella henselae is proposed to have a role in the pathogenesis of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) encephalopathy. Bartonella bacilliformis produces two known toxins that can induce spasm and angiomatosis, respectively, and manifest as diseases associated with symptomatic AIDS. The skin lesions of bartonellosis may be mistaken clinically and histologically for Kaposi's sarcoma. Bacteria of the genus Proteus produce L-forms: their elementary bodies may be mistaken for what are called the 'human immunodeficiency viruses' (HIV). Antibiotics, especially penicillin, induce bacteria to produce L-forms. Air pollution and high sugar, salt and fat diets are factors that may increase the lipid content of microbes that produce toxins and L-forms that may persist or revert to bacterial form.

Bartonella bacilliformis or a similar organism and cardiovascular disease.

Bartonella bacilliformis invades the endothelial lining of the cardiovascular system. Damage to the red blood cells and white blood cells, the effects of the toxins, invasion of the brain and electrical charges induced by the organism so interfering with normal electrical stimulation of the heart may explain many of the features of cardiovascular disease (1-5).