On a Doctor’s Data stool test, a patient had moderate yeast and many Blasto in all three samples. Low short-chain fatty acids, fairly good levels of beneficial bacteria. The handout says to treat for 30 to 60 days for mild to severe fungal overgrowth. So I’d like to check whether in this case I should advise treating for 60 days.

Dr. Amy Nett: If there is many Blasto on all three samples, I would do 60 to 90 days because that’s overgrowth of Blastocystis, and I would actually be equally or more concerned about the Blasto. So I would do a minimum of 60 days. If you’re still seeing symptom improvement at 60 days, you can carry that out for 90 days and then stop. You can also, if you see at 60 days that the patient had been seeing some improvement and then that improvement plateaus, then you can stop it once the improvement has plateaued, wait two weeks and repeat the test. And then you may need to consider if Blasto is still there depending on what that growth looks like, may or may not need to consider something a little more aggressive to deal with the Blasto. But that’s concerning enough that, yeah, I would do a minimum of 60 days see how the patient’s doing at that point, consider going out to 90 days.