It's actually not rare at all and they are now confirming that cancer and alzheimers are being caused by an actinobacteria which is what t. whipplei is there are many different strains of it. It's commonly found in soil a lot of farmers that deal with livestock get it. It not only affects your gi tract but spreads systemically throughout your entire body well it has for me anyway. I had the endoscopy done but it did not show in my gi tract which the gi doctor told me it may not because it probably has spread beyond that area which it has like my nervous system, brain, heart, and liver most likely. I don't believe there is such a stool test that exists for this I tried finding out about it and came up with nothing in regards to it which would be the easiest quickest method to test for it. They were able to test people in a village in Senegal both their saliva and stool but not here in the US try and make some sense out of that. I have an infectious disease appointment on Dec 18th I've had no help from the medical field just disbelief and I spread this to my entire family and kids and ex wife and her family too. I've tried everything I could think of as far as supplements go I was taking black seed oil which was helping but I just ran out of it. I have next to no income so it's hard to purchase things these days. Nothing shows for this in my blood work except epstein bare virus which isn't active right now. It's been horrible I lost everything because of this. I got this infection from a health supplement called deer antler velvet spray which came from New Zealand and whipples disease is very common there. This bacteria is found in soil, unclean water, silos, corn mills, air conditioning units, and closed stables. A friend of mine is going through the same thing and he used to be an air conditioning repair man.