I contracted Lyme disease, which is of course infectious unlike lupus, and took doxycycline without any ill effects, it just did its job & got rid of the Bb antibodies and stopped full blown Lyme developing.
If you believe that lupus as well as RA is due to these infectious thingies whose name I forget, then it makes sense to use an antibiotic. None of the well known lupus specialists accepts the Road Back theory. I think it's only available privately in the USA and not at all in the UK. Some of the statements made in some Road Back literature about lupus treatment are in my opinion very misleading and unnecessarily scare mongering. I can't imagine why they need to promote antibiotic therapy in these terms.
Anyway, to get back to the topic. In one study of 250 drug reactions in SLE patients ranging from worsening lupus to skin reactions, 30 were to sulfa drugs, 25 to penicillin, 20 to cephalosporins 19 to tetracyclines 18 to erythromycin. This was 57% of 340 SLE patients compared with 14% of 303 chronic arthritis patients in that clinic. ( Dubois' SLE Ed Dr Wallace )
It seems to me that Minocin is the tetracycline the most often implicated, but there are times when we have to take drugs that risk worsening our lupus or run the risk of even worse still on top of the lupus
Quite a few people take doxycycline regularly on doctor's orders, like Raglet, but it isn't for treating the lupus per se.
Cheers
Clare