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My completely naive and unqualified opinion on why antibiotic therapy worked in my case is that some percentage of sarcoidosis and possibly other autoimmune disease like RA is caused by 'internal acne' of some tissues causing runaway inflammation. Minocycline is mostly used to treat skin/face acne but has fallen out of favor because of side effects. IIRC this is because it penetrates deeper into tissues and can cross the blood/brain barrier.

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I'm putting this info here in case it helps anyone. I am not a doctor and not giving medical advice, just sharing my personal story.

I haven't thought about this stuff in over 10 years, but there seems to be a lot of evidence now supporting this theory of bacterial acnes causing runaway inflammation. I can't believe that steroids plus pain killers are still the standard treatment for autoimmune diseases without any investigation into root causes. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14620162/

Furthermore, there is evidence in discs https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28369127/ a common flare-up point for people with RA

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