Once these are identified then they can be treated with a regimen with antibiotics, vitamins and nutritional considerations that are involved in these treatments.
Dr. Mazlin -- Does everybody respond to treatment?
Dr. Nicolson -- So far, we've found that at least three quarters of the people that start this treatment have recovered. Not everybody recovers and we attribute that to the fact that a lot of people have multiple reasons for their chronic conditions. Some people have severe chemical exposures, for example, and those are not treated at all by the antibiotic regimen. Other people have viruses that are very important in the etiology of their illnesses and those aren't touched by antibiotics, although recently, we found a combination of antivirals and the antibiotics.
Dr. Mazlin -- You mentioned that this organism is partially anerobic so for that reason, sometimes, when people go through air travel, let's say they're traveling to some destination, their disease may worsen. Can you explain that?
Dr. Nicolson -- Well, we think one of the problems that amny patients that have Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome have is that when they travel by air they relapse very heavily, that is their signs and symptoms become worse. This is commonly found and it's not just so much the stress of traveling, we think there's another element involved and that's that when they travel they fly under conditions of reduced oxygen pressure, so partial pressure of oxygen is actually reduced on the cabin of the aircraft flying at 20 - 30,000 feet. This is especially apparent in people who fly in helicopters so we have a lot of pilots that have contacted us. Some people get temporary relief by going on hyperbaric oxygen, that is oxygen under pressure that increases the partial pressure of oxygen. All of this is consistent with what happens with a Mycoplasma infection. These infections are what's known as borderline anerobes. That is, the micro-organism prefers low oxygen tension, so if you over exert, for example, and you starve your tissues for oxygen, that will actually stimulate the growth of these micro-organisms, or if you fly in an aircraft for a long period of time, a long flight, that can stimulate these, and so the signs and symptoms can become worse after such an event.
Dr. Mazlin -- Talk briefly about testing patients for this. How do you test a patient if they want to find out if they have this? What are the options?
Dr. Nicolson -- First, we have developed these tests over the last 5 or 6 years and they're very sensitive tests and there are only a few places that can conduct these tests. We use blood as the starting point. We analyze the white blood cells. We use two different types of extremely sensitive techniques. both of them are molecular biological techniques, one is called nucleoprotein gene tracking and the other is called forensic polymerase chain reaction. Now without going into any detail, both of these are based upon the genetic makeup of the micro-organism and they're extremely sensitive. People can call our institute at (714) 903-2900 or go to our website for information on how to be tested. We're a non-profit institute so we accept a donation in lieu of paying for the test and once people give the donation, then we do their test. We have thousands of people contacting us for information on how to get the tests run and so we provide that information, we send them a package of publications, for example, reports and how to sign up for the test, how to send the blood, information they can take to their physicians and so on. They send their blood, they usually get their results back in 3 or 4 weeks.
Dr. Mazlin -- In terms of the extent of this infection, we know it's present in Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Gulf War Illness as described in your excellent work. Is it also more prevalent than that? Do other people have it?
Dr. Nicolson -- What we're finding is that we can't detect these highly pathogenic mycoplasma species in normal adults, so it's obviously much more prevalent in the patients with disease. We're looking at a number of other disorders, the most recent one we're looking at is Inflammatory Bowel Disorder and we're finding it there as well. It's very interesting, these different disorders, depending upon the organ system that's involved may involve a different species of mycoplasmas. The highly penetrating types of mycoplasmas are the ones that cause the most systemic or system-wide illnesses and those are the most dangerous and we're very concious of this.