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u/Sureokgo

🔥 Hot ▲ 427 r/selfimprovement

A bacterial infection from cat scratches can cause brain fog, rage, insomnia, and foot pain for years. Nobody tests for it.

Bartonella henselae. The bacteria behind cat scratch fever. 15 to 40% of cats carry it depending on age and flea exposure. Most doctors think the infection is mild and self-limiting. In some people it isn't.

It's an intracellular pathogen. Hides inside red blood cells and the endothelial cells lining your blood vessels, including the ones in your brain. Your immune system can't see it properly. It sits there causing chronic neuroinflammation for months or years.

Edward Breitschwerdt's lab at NC State has been documenting this for over a decade.

The research:

A 2019 case study: a boy developed sudden psychosis and seizures from confirmed Bartonella in his blood. Treated with antibiotics. Resolved.

A 2024 review from his lab called Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity catalogued the full neurological damage - encephalitis, peripheral neuropathy, cerebral vasculitis, psychiatric symptoms including psychosis.

A 2024 study from Columbia and NC State tested 116 people. Patients with psychotic disorders were three times more likely to have Bartonella DNA in their blood than healthy controls (43% vs 14%, p=0.021).

A 2021 pilot study at UNC and NC State found the same thing. 65% of schizophrenia patients had Bartonella DNA, 8% of controls.

Two independent research groups. Two separate patient populations. Same result.

Why testing misses it:

Standard testing is an IFA antibody test. But Bartonella hides inside cells and your immune system may never mount a detectable antibody response. The Columbia study proved this directly — the antibody test could not distinguish patients with psychosis from healthy controls. The PCR could. Same blood, same patients, different test, different answer.

A negative IFA does not rule out Bartonella. It rules out a detectable antibody response. Those aren't the same thing.

Better tests: enrichment PCR or droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Most doctors have never heard of either. You have to ask.

The symptom pattern:

  • Brain fog that started suddenly, not lifelong
  • Rage or irritability that doesn't fit your personality
  • Anxiety or panic that SSRIs don't touch
  • Insomnia the wired kind, not the tired kind
  • Unexplained foot pain (endothelial inflammation and peripheral neuropathy)
  • Linear raised marks on shins or thighs (look at your legs)
  • Headaches that track the same timeline

Any one of these means nothing. Four or more with cat or flea exposure warrants testing.

The antibiotic clue nobody talks about:

If you've ever taken antibiotics for something unrelated dental infection, UTI, sinus infection and your brain fog temporarily improved, that's meaningful. Random antibiotics can partially suppress Bartonella. Most patients and doctors read this as evidence that the dental issue was the problem. It can also be evidence of a bacterial cause hiding underneath.

Treatment:

Chronic Bartonella requires targeted antibiotics for weeks, not days. The specific drugs and duration vary by species, severity, and individual response. This needs a doctor familiar with intracellular infection protocols. Herxheimer reactions (feeling worse before better) are common as bacteria die off.

What to ask your doctor:

  • Enrichment PCR (BAPGM) or ddPCR testing, not just IFA
  • Cat scratch history, not just "do you have pets"
  • Whether any prior antibiotic course coincided with symptom improvement

Bartonella isn't responsible for every case of brain fog. It's worth checking when the symptom pattern fits and the fundamentals have already been addressed.

What about the cat

I'm not a vet. But here's what I learned when I went down this road.

Most cats that carry Bartonella show no symptoms at all. Your cat isn't sick. It's a carrier. You won't know by looking at it.

Kittens are higher risk than adult cats. They carry higher bacterial loads and they scratch more. Rescue kittens with fleas are the highest risk combination. That was my situation exactly.

Cats can be tested. A vet can run PCR on blood to check for Bartonella. But a negative doesn't mean they never had it. Cats can clear the bacteria on their own over time. A cat that infected you 6 months ago might test clean today.

The single most important thing you can do is flea control. Bartonella lives in flea feces. Fleas defecate on the cat. Feces gets under the claws. Cat scratches you. That's the transmission chain. Break it at the flea step and the rest doesn't happen.

Topical or oral flea preventative. Year round. Not just summer.

Beyond that. Keep claws trimmed. Don't let cats lick open wounds. If you get scratched wash it immediately and thoroughly. Don't play rough with kittens using your hands.

Don't get rid of your cat. That's not the message here. The message is keep the cat flea-free, handle scratches properly, and if you develop unexplained neuropsychiatric symptoms with the timeline and symptoms I described, tell your doctor you have cat exposure.

SOURCES

  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella henselae bloodstream infection in a boy with PANS. J Central Nervous System Disease. 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1179573519832014
  • Lashnits E et al. Schizophrenia and Bartonella spp. Infection: A Pilot Case-Control Study. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. 2021. PubMed: 33728987
  • Bush JC, Robveille C, Maggi RG, Breitschwerdt EB. Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity. 2024. PubMed: 39369199
  • Delaney S et al. Bartonella species bacteremia in association with adult psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2024. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1388442
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. One Health Zoonotic Vector Borne Infectious Disease Family Outbreak Investigation. Pathogens. 2025. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens14020110
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella Associated Cutaneous Lesions in People with Neuropsychiatric Symptoms. Pathogens. 2020. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens9121023
reddit.com
u/Sureokgo — 10 hours ago
▲ 24 r/Lyme

A bacterial infection from cat scratches can cause brain fog, rage, insomnia, and foot pain for years. Nobody tests for it.

Bartonella henselae. The bacteria behind cat scratch fever. 15 to 40% of cats carry it depending on age and flea exposure. Most doctors think the infection is mild and self-limiting. In some people it isn't.

It's an intracellular pathogen. Hides inside red blood cells and the endothelial cells lining your blood vessels, including the ones in your brain. Your immune system can't see it properly. It sits there causing chronic neuroinflammation for months or years.

Edward Breitschwerdt's lab at NC State has been documenting this for over a decade.

The research:

A 2019 case study: a boy developed sudden psychosis and seizures from confirmed Bartonella in his blood. Treated with antibiotics. Resolved.

A 2024 review from his lab called Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity catalogued the full neurological damage - encephalitis, peripheral neuropathy, cerebral vasculitis, psychiatric symptoms including psychosis.

A 2024 study from Columbia and NC State tested 116 people. Patients with psychotic disorders were three times more likely to have Bartonella DNA in their blood than healthy controls (43% vs 14%, p=0.021).

A 2021 pilot study at UNC and NC State found the same thing. 65% of schizophrenia patients had Bartonella DNA, 8% of controls.

Two independent research groups. Two separate patient populations. Same result.

Why testing misses it:

Standard testing is an IFA antibody test. But Bartonella hides inside cells and your immune system may never mount a detectable antibody response. The Columbia study proved this directly — the antibody test could not distinguish patients with psychosis from healthy controls. The PCR could. Same blood, same patients, different test, different answer.

A negative IFA does not rule out Bartonella. It rules out a detectable antibody response. Those aren't the same thing.

Better tests: enrichment PCR or droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Most doctors have never heard of either. You have to ask.

The symptom pattern:

  • Brain fog that started suddenly, not lifelong
  • Rage or irritability that doesn't fit your personality
  • Anxiety or panic that SSRIs don't touch
  • Insomnia the wired kind, not the tired kind
  • Unexplained foot pain (endothelial inflammation and peripheral neuropathy)
  • Linear raised marks on shins or thighs (look at your legs)
  • Headaches that track the same timeline

Any one of these means nothing. Four or more with cat or flea exposure warrants testing.

The antibiotic clue nobody talks about:

If you've ever taken antibiotics for something unrelated dental infection, UTI, sinus infection and your brain fog temporarily improved, that's meaningful. Random antibiotics can partially suppress Bartonella. Most patients and doctors read this as evidence that the dental issue was the problem. It can also be evidence of a bacterial cause hiding underneath.

Treatment:

Chronic Bartonella requires targeted antibiotics for weeks, not days. The specific drugs and duration vary by species, severity, and individual response. This needs a doctor familiar with intracellular infection protocols. Herxheimer reactions (feeling worse before better) are common as bacteria die off.

What to ask your doctor:

  • Enrichment PCR (BAPGM) or ddPCR testing, not just IFA
  • Cat scratch history, not just "do you have pets"
  • Whether any prior antibiotic course coincided with symptom improvement

Bartonella isn't responsible for every case of brain fog. It's worth checking when the symptom pattern fits and the fundamentals have already been addressed.

What about the cat

I'm not a vet. But here's what I learned when I went down this road.

Most cats that carry Bartonella show no symptoms at all. Your cat isn't sick. It's a carrier. You won't know by looking at it.

Kittens are higher risk than adult cats. They carry higher bacterial loads and they scratch more. Rescue kittens with fleas are the highest risk combination. That was my situation exactly.

Cats can be tested. A vet can run PCR on blood to check for Bartonella. But a negative doesn't mean they never had it. Cats can clear the bacteria on their own over time. A cat that infected you 6 months ago might test clean today.

The single most important thing you can do is flea control. Bartonella lives in flea feces. Fleas defecate on the cat. Feces gets under the claws. Cat scratches you. That's the transmission chain. Break it at the flea step and the rest doesn't happen.

Topical or oral flea preventative. Year round. Not just summer.

Beyond that. Keep claws trimmed. Don't let cats lick open wounds. If you get scratched wash it immediately and thoroughly. Don't play rough with kittens using your hands.

Don't get rid of your cat. That's not the message here. The message is keep the cat flea-free, handle scratches properly, and if you develop unexplained neuropsychiatric symptoms with the timeline and symptoms I described, tell your doctor you have cat exposure.

SOURCES

  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella henselae bloodstream infection in a boy with PANS. J Central Nervous System Disease. 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1179573519832014
  • Lashnits E et al. Schizophrenia and Bartonella spp. Infection: A Pilot Case-Control Study. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. 2021. PubMed: 33728987
  • Bush JC, Robveille C, Maggi RG, Breitschwerdt EB. Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity. 2024. PubMed: 39369199
  • Delaney S et al. Bartonella species bacteremia in association with adult psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2024. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1388442
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. One Health Zoonotic Vector Borne Infectious Disease Family Outbreak Investigation. Pathogens. 2025. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens14020110
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella Associated Cutaneous Lesions in People with Neuropsychiatric Symptoms. Pathogens. 2020. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens9121023
reddit.com
u/Sureokgo — 11 hours ago
🔥 Hot ▲ 375 r/Biohackers

A bacterial infection from cat scratches can cause brain fog, rage, insomnia, and foot pain for years. Nobody tests for it.

Bartonella henselae. The bacteria behind cat scratch fever. 15 to 40% of cats carry it depending on age and flea exposure. Most doctors think the infection is mild and self-limiting. In some people it isn't.

It's an intracellular pathogen. Hides inside red blood cells and the endothelial cells lining your blood vessels, including the ones in your brain. Your immune system can't see it properly. It sits there causing chronic neuroinflammation for months or years.

Edward Breitschwerdt's lab at NC State has been documenting this for over a decade.

The research:

A 2019 case study: a boy developed sudden psychosis and seizures from confirmed Bartonella in his blood. Treated with antibiotics. Resolved.

A 2024 review from his lab called Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity catalogued the full neurological damage - encephalitis, peripheral neuropathy, cerebral vasculitis, psychiatric symptoms including psychosis.

A 2024 study from Columbia and NC State tested 116 people. Patients with psychotic disorders were three times more likely to have Bartonella DNA in their blood than healthy controls (43% vs 14%, p=0.021).

A 2021 pilot study at UNC and NC State found the same thing. 65% of schizophrenia patients had Bartonella DNA, 8% of controls.

Two independent research groups. Two separate patient populations. Same result.

Why testing misses it:

Standard testing is an IFA antibody test. But Bartonella hides inside cells and your immune system may never mount a detectable antibody response. The Columbia study proved this directly — the antibody test could not distinguish patients with psychosis from healthy controls. The PCR could. Same blood, same patients, different test, different answer.

A negative IFA does not rule out Bartonella. It rules out a detectable antibody response. Those aren't the same thing.

Better tests: enrichment PCR or droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). Most doctors have never heard of either. You have to ask.

The symptom pattern:

  • Brain fog that started suddenly, not lifelong
  • Rage or irritability that doesn't fit your personality
  • Anxiety or panic that SSRIs don't touch
  • Insomnia the wired kind, not the tired kind
  • Unexplained foot pain (endothelial inflammation and peripheral neuropathy)
  • Linear raised marks on shins or thighs (look at your legs)
  • Headaches that track the same timeline

Any one of these means nothing. Four or more with cat or flea exposure warrants testing.

The antibiotic clue nobody talks about:

If you've ever taken antibiotics for something unrelated dental infection, UTI, sinus infection and your brain fog temporarily improved, that's meaningful. Random antibiotics can partially suppress Bartonella. Most patients and doctors read this as evidence that the dental issue was the problem. It can also be evidence of a bacterial cause hiding underneath.

Treatment:

Chronic Bartonella requires targeted antibiotics for weeks, not days. The specific drugs and duration vary by species, severity, and individual response. This needs a doctor familiar with intracellular infection protocols. Herxheimer reactions (feeling worse before better) are common as bacteria die off.

What to ask your doctor:

  • Enrichment PCR (BAPGM) or ddPCR testing, not just IFA
  • Cat scratch history, not just "do you have pets"
  • Whether any prior antibiotic course coincided with symptom improvement

Bartonella isn't responsible for every case of brain fog. It's worth checking when the symptom pattern fits and the fundamentals have already been addressed.

What about the cat

I'm not a vet. But here's what I learned when I went down this road.

Most cats that carry Bartonella show no symptoms at all. Your cat isn't sick. It's a carrier. You won't know by looking at it.

Kittens are higher risk than adult cats. They carry higher bacterial loads and they scratch more. Rescue kittens with fleas are the highest risk combination. That was my situation exactly.

Cats can be tested. A vet can run PCR on blood to check for Bartonella. But a negative doesn't mean they never had it. Cats can clear the bacteria on their own over time. A cat that infected you 6 months ago might test clean today.

The single most important thing you can do is flea control. Bartonella lives in flea feces. Fleas defecate on the cat. Feces gets under the claws. Cat scratches you. That's the transmission chain. Break it at the flea step and the rest doesn't happen.

Topical or oral flea preventative. Year round. Not just summer.

Beyond that. Keep claws trimmed. Don't let cats lick open wounds. If you get scratched wash it immediately and thoroughly. Don't play rough with kittens using your hands.

Don't get rid of your cat. That's not the message here. The message is keep the cat flea-free, handle scratches properly, and if you develop unexplained neuropsychiatric symptoms with the timeline and symptoms I described, tell your doctor you have cat exposure.

SOURCES

  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella henselae bloodstream infection in a boy with PANS. J Central Nervous System Disease. 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1179573519832014
  • Lashnits E et al. Schizophrenia and Bartonella spp. Infection: A Pilot Case-Control Study. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. 2021. PubMed: 33728987
  • Bush JC, Robveille C, Maggi RG, Breitschwerdt EB. Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity. 2024. PubMed: 39369199
  • Delaney S et al. Bartonella species bacteremia in association with adult psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2024. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1388442
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. One Health Zoonotic Vector Borne Infectious Disease Family Outbreak Investigation. Pathogens. 2025. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens14020110
  • Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella Associated Cutaneous Lesions in People with Neuropsychiatric Symptoms. Pathogens. 2020. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens9121023
reddit.com
u/Sureokgo — 12 hours ago
I optimized every brain fog intervention for years. Got to 70%. The last 30% was hiding in my cat.
▲ 6 r/Biohackers

I optimized every brain fog intervention for years. Got to 70%. The last 30% was hiding in my cat.

It started slow. Like a snowball.

Tasks I used to breeze through became annoying. Then they became hard. Then I was pushing through them angry and I didn't understand why.

What I tried first

I spent the better part of a year and in some respects a decade systematically testing every intervention I could find for brain fog. One at a time. With a baseline between each.

  • CO2 monitor in the bedroom
  • Morning electrolytes
  • Ferritin optimization
  • Vitamin D loading
  • Magnesium
  • Caffeine elimination
  • Alcohol elimination
  • Daily exercise

Each one helped. Each one peeled off a layer. My working memory came back. I could hold a conversation without losing the thread. Morning grogginess gone. Afternoon crashes gone. Verbal fluency better.

I've written about most of these individually because each one was its own rabbit hole.

Brain fog isn't one problem. It's a stack of problems wearing a trench coat. And you have to peel them off one at a time to figure out which ones are actually yours.

But I wasn't clear. Not what I remembered my brain being capable of. There was still this film over my thinking that wouldn't lift no matter what I optimized.

And a few symptoms that none of the fundamentals touched at all.

The symptoms that wouldn't go away

The rage. That never made sense. I'm not an angry person. Never have been. But for months I'd been snapping at people over nothing. Disproportionate explosive reactions that didn't fit my personality followed by this confused feeling of what just happened.

Fixing my ferritin didn't touch it. Fixing my sleep didn't touch it. Exercise helped my mood overall but the sudden rage episodes kept coming through.

The insomnia. Not the tired kind. The wired at 2am kind. Brain running full speed producing nothing. Heart rate up for no reason.

Magnesium helped my sleep quality but this was different. I'd fall asleep fine then wake at 1 or 2am completely wired. That cycle didn't match any of the sleep interventions I'd tried.

Foot pain. This persistent ache in my feet that started around the same time as everything else. Went to a doctor. Plantar fasciitis. Stretches and orthotics. Didn't help.

Didn't connect it to the fog at the time because why would foot pain be related to brain fog.

Turns out Bartonella causes endothelial inflammation and peripheral neuropathy. The blood vessel walls in your feet are blood vessel walls the same as the ones in your brain. Same bacteria. Same mechanism. Different location.

And these faint marks on my shins. Linear, slightly raised, didn't look like stretch marks. I didn't think anything of them. Mentioned it to my doctor once. She shrugged.

I kept researching because the remaining 30% was driving me crazy. I'd fixed everything the biohacking world tells you to fix. I had the blood work to prove the nutrients were optimized. I was sleeping well, exercising daily, no caffeine, no alcohol, good air quality.

And I was still foggy with unexplained rage and insomnia and foot pain that three doctors shrugged at.

Finding the research

Then I found the work of Edward Breitschwerdt at NC State.

His lab has been publishing on a bacteria called Bartonella henselae for over a decade.

Prevalence studies estimate anywhere from 15 to 40% of cats carry it at some point, with kittens and shelter cats at the higher end. Gets under their claws from flea feces. You get scratched. Bacteria enters your blood.

Most doctors know this as cat scratch fever. Mild. Self-limiting. Few weeks and done.

What they don't know is that in some people it doesn't clear.

Bartonella is an intracellular pathogen. It gets inside your red blood cells and the endothelial cells lining your blood vessels including the ones in your brain. Hides inside your own cells. Your immune system can't see it properly.

It sits there causing chronic neuroinflammation for months or years.

The first thing I read was his 2019 case study. A boy who developed sudden-onset psychosis and psychiatric symptoms from confirmed Bartonella in his blood. Treated with antibiotics. Resolved.

One case. But the symptom pattern stopped me cold.

Then I found his 2024 review. He called it Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity, and it catalogued everything his lab had documented over 12 years. Encephalitis. Neuropathy. Cerebral vasculitis. Psychiatric symptoms including psychosis.

This wasn't a fringe theory. It was a decade of published evidence that most clinicians had never seen.

That same year a collaboration between Columbia and NC State tested this directly. Published in Frontiers in Psychiatry. They tested 116 people for Bartonella DNA. Patients with psychotic disorders were three times more likely to have it in their blood than healthy controls.

Three times.

That wasn't even the first time this had been found. A 2021 pilot study at NC State and UNC tested 17 people with schizophrenia and 13 healthy controls. Bartonella DNA was detected in 11 of the 17 patients. 65%. One of the 13 controls. Two separate research groups. Two separate patient populations. Same result.

In early 2025 Breitschwerdt put out a family case study. Whole household infected through shared pets. All with neuropsychiatric symptoms. Mother, father, both kids, the dogs. Everyone.

Thinking backwards

I read all of this and then I thought backwards.

The symptoms that the fundamentals didn't fix. The rage. The wired insomnia. The foot pain. The shin marks. The residual fog.

When did all of that actually start.

I'd gotten a kitten. A rescue. She had fleas when we got her. Treated them fast but she scratched me a few times before that.

I didn't think about it once at the time. Cat scratches are normal.

I went to my doctor and asked for Bartonella testing. She ran the standard IFA antibody test. Negative. She said see, not Bartonella.

But I'd read enough of Breitschwerdt's work to know the standard test misses chronic infections. The bacteria is intracellular. Your immune system may never mount a detectable antibody response.

A negative IFA doesn't rule out Bartonella. It rules out a detectable antibody response. Those are not the same thing.

The Delaney study at Columbia confirmed this directly. The antibody test could not distinguish patients with psychosis from healthy controls. The PCR could. Same patients. Same blood. Different test. Different answer.

I pushed for enrichment PCR. Had to show her the papers. She'd never heard of it. Eventually got tested properly.

Positive. Bartonella henselae.

The antibiotic trap nobody warns you about (Important)

Before I talk about treatment there's something I learned that I've never seen written anywhere and it might be the most important paragraph in this post.

If you take antibiotics for something completely unrelated, a dental infection, a UTI, a sinus infection, anything, and your brain fog temporarily improves, pay very close attention to that.

Bartonella is a bacteria. Random antibiotics can partially suppress it. Your symptoms get better for a few weeks. You and your doctor both think ah it was the dental thing. The antibiotics stop. Everything comes back.

That accidental improvement is actually evidence of a bacterial cause. But most people and most doctors read it backwards. They think the dental issue was the problem and now you're back to square one with no one looking for the real answer.

This is the hardest trap to escape because the false evidence feels so convincing. You felt better on antibiotics. The dental work happened at the same time. The logic seems airtight.

But the bacteria is still there and it'll keep grinding.

If you've ever had a mysterious temporary improvement while on antibiotics for something else, file that away. That clue matters more than most blood work.

Treatment

Six weeks of targeted antibiotics. I'm not going to name specific drugs because chronic Bartonella treatment varies by species, severity, and individual response.

What worked for me could be wrong for someone else. This needs a doctor who knows intracellular infection protocols. Self-treating is how you breed resistant bacteria.

First few weeks were rough. Felt worse before better. That's normal with intracellular infections. When antibiotics kill the bacteria your body has to process the debris.

Think of it like a battlefield. The war is being won but there are dead bodies in the trench and your body is the one cleaning them up. It feels like being poisoned because you are being poisoned, just by dead bacteria instead of live ones.

Don't panic and don't quit treatment. Feeling worse early on means it's working.

Then the insomnia broke. First time in months I slept through to my alarm without the 2am wired awakening.

Then the rage started fading. My partner noticed before I did. She said you haven't snapped at me in weeks.

The last of the fog lifted over months 3 and 4. Not a switch. More like the remaining film over my thinking slowly dissolved.

The foot pain improved last. Not fully gone but maybe 80% better. I still don't know if that'll fully resolve or if there's some permanent damage there. Time will tell.

Why the stack matters

Every fundamental I'd fixed was real. Every one of them did something. But underneath all of those layers was an infection that none of that could touch.

And if I'd stopped at 70% better and accepted that as my new normal I'd still be living with rage attacks and wired insomnia and foot pain and a thin film of fog over everything.

Because no amount of electrolytes fixes a bacterial infection hiding inside your blood vessel walls.

The worst trap would have been to say ok, this is enough, live with it. Because I could cope. At a huge cost, but I could cope.

And the more I coped the easier it was to stop looking.

I am tired of coping and saying it is what it is.

I wasn't relevant enough to be captured by the statistics of any single intervention.

None of the studies were about me specifically. But for me it wasn't 0.01 percent.

It was 100 percent of my life.

And I refused to live at 70% when the answer was still out there.

The symptom pattern I now flag every time I see it

  • Brain fog that started suddenly. You can roughly point to when it began.
  • Rage that doesn't fit your personality. The kind that scares you afterwards.
  • Anxiety or panic that SSRIs don't touch.
  • Insomnia. The wired kind not the tired kind.
  • Foot pain nobody can explain.
  • Shin streaks. Linear slightly raised marks on shins or thighs that don't look like stretch marks.

Look at your legs right now.

Any one of these alone means nothing. Four or more with a history of cat or flea exposure and I'd look at Bartonella before I'd look at anything else.

Don't accept a negative IFA as the final answer. Ask specifically for enrichment PCR or digital droplet PCR. You'll probably have to show your doctor the research. This isn't fringe. Breitschwerdt has over a decade of peer reviewed work in Frontiers, Pathogens, and the Journal of Central Nervous System Disease.

Full disclosure: Breitschwerdt co-founded Galaxy Diagnostics, one of the labs that offers enrichment PCR. He discloses this in every paper. The conflict is real and worth noting. The data is also real. The Columbia team that collected the samples is independent. Read the conflict of interest statements yourself and make your own call.

And if you've ever felt mysteriously better while taking antibiotics for something else, tell your doctor that. It might be the thread that unravels everything.

What about the cat

I love my cat, cats and all the cats I have had in my life, let it be known to the world.

I'm not a vet. But here's what I learned when I went down this road.

Most cats that carry Bartonella show no symptoms at all. Your cat isn't sick. It's a carrier.

You won't know by looking at it.

Kittens are higher risk than adult cats. They carry higher bacterial loads and they scratch more. Rescue kittens with fleas are the highest risk combination. That was my situation exactly.

Cats can be tested. A vet can run PCR on blood to check for Bartonella. But a negative doesn't mean they never had it. Cats can clear the bacteria on their own over time. A cat that infected you 6 months ago might test clean today.

The single most important thing you can do is flea control. Bartonella lives in flea feces. Fleas defecate on the cat. Feces gets under the claws. Cat scratches you. That's the transmission chain. Break it at the flea step and the rest doesn't happen.

Topical or oral flea preventative. Year round. Not just summer.

Beyond that:

  • Keep claws trimmed
  • Don't let cats lick open wounds
  • If you get scratched wash it immediately and thoroughly
  • Don't play rough with kittens using your hands

Don't get rid of your cat. That's not the message here. The message is keep the cat flea-free, handle scratches properly, and if you develop unexplained neuropsychiatric symptoms with the timeline and symptoms I described, tell your doctor you have cat exposure.

And if you've already optimized the fundamentals and there's still a piece that won't budge, consider the possibility that something is hiding underneath all of it.

Sometimes the last 30% is the thing nobody thought to test for.

Studies referenced:

Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella henselae bloodstream infection in a boy with pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome. J Central Nervous System Disease. 2019. DOI: 10.1177/1179573519832014

Lashnits E, Maggi R, Jarskog F, Bradley J, Breitschwerdt E, Frohlich F. Schizophrenia and Bartonella spp. Infection: A Pilot Case-Control Study. Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. 2021;21(6):413-421. PubMed ID: 33728987

Bush JC, Robveille C, Maggi RG, Breitschwerdt EB. Neurobartonelloses: emerging from obscurity. 2024. PubMed ID: 39369199

Delaney S, Robveille C, Maggi RG, Lashnits E, Kingston E, Liedig C, Murray L, Fallon BA, Breitschwerdt EB. Bartonella species bacteremia in association with adult psychosis. Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2024. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1388442

Breitschwerdt EB et al. One Health Zoonotic Vector Borne Infectious Disease Family Outbreak Investigation. Pathogens. 2025. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens14020110

Breitschwerdt EB et al. Bartonella Associated Cutaneous Lesions in People with Neuropsychiatric Symptoms. Pathogens. 2020. DOI: 10.3390/pathogens9121023

CDC. Bartonella infection (cat scratch disease): prevention and transmission. cdc.gov/bartonella

u/Sureokgo — 13 hours ago