Falling IgG

[jasonjuul]

Hi,

  My 14-year old daughter's most recent labs showed her IgG at 1409 (reference range is 639 to 1344). This is down from 1605 last February, 1917 in Aug of 2008, and pretty much > 2000 over the previous 5 years.

  My simple-minded thinking is that this is a positive development in that the IgG is getting closer to being within the reference range.  Anyone have any insights regarding a downward trending IgG they could share?

  On another positive note (hey, two in one day!) my daughter's Ped. Rheum. tested her for a couple of the scleroderma autoantibodies (scl-70 and centromere, me thinks) and they both came back negative. I was pretty concerned about one or both of these coming back positive in that she has MCTD which shares some of the same traits as scleroderma and sometimes morphs into scleroderma.

  Now if we can get through tomorrow's Pulmonary Function Tests and have the DLCO show improvement, I will be the happiest human on the face of the earth!

  Thanks for listening, er, reading.

-John M.

[Maz]

Hi John,

This is great news – both the falling IgG and negative sclero auto-antibodies! 😀 No wonder your parent's heart is so full of joy! Mine would be, too, and I share in it with you!

As far as I know, IgG (Immunoglobulin G) is usually tested to detect some type of past infection and body's humoral response to it. Do you know in what context this test was done? In other words, in Lyme testing, a Western Blot IgM and IgG might be run to determine current or past infection,respecitviely (not that it really means much as these tests vary due to the waxing/waning nature of the borrelia organism). IgG is run for all kinds of infections (and, I think some types of hypersensitivities/allergies), though…do you know what this is specifically being run for in your daughter's case? Whatever it is…my fellow patient's guess is that any lab marker that falls closer to that magical reference range is a good number!

Here's a little Wiki description of IgG, though there may be better ones out there that you have already found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_G

All the very best for your lovely daughter's PFT tomorrow! Please let us know how it goes for her (and you, too, Dad!).

Peace, Maz

[Kim]

We always agonize over these reports, John, so it's always nice confirmation that something's working.  Good work, Dad. 🙂

What a cutie you have there. 🙂

Take care…….kim

[jasonjuul]

Hello Maz and Kim,

  First of all, sorry for the tardy reply.  Secondly, thank you for responding to my question regarding the falling IgG and for inquiring about Rachael's PFTs.

  Good news about the PFT results – Rachael's DLCO didn't decline. Unfortunately it didn't improve any but I will take stability for now. The one caveat is that it has only been 7 weeks since her last one. I insisted on having them done this soon because I didn't think I could bear waiting 3 or 4 months and enduring what could have been a big dropoff. We're going to wait 3 months and retest.

  Looking at the lab req form from Children's Hospital, the IgG test Rachael has is part of the “Specific Protein Analysis” panel. Her Ped. Rheum. usually checks off IgG, C3, C4, and C-reactive protein within this panel.

Cheers,
John

[Maz]

[user=1157]jasonjuul[/user] wrote:

Good news about the PFT results – Rachael's DLCO didn't decline. Unfortunately it didn't improve any but I will take stability for now. The one caveat is that it has only been 7 weeks since her last one. I insisted on having them done this soon because I didn't think I could bear waiting 3 or 4 months and enduring what could have been a big dropoff. We're going to wait 3 months and retest.

Looking at the lab req form from Children's Hospital, the IgG test Rachael has is part of the “Specific Protein Analysis” panel. Her Ped. Rheum. usually checks off IgG, C3, C4, and C-reactive protein within this panel.

 

John, this is excellent news re: PFTs! Thanks for coming back to let us know Rachael's results. 😀

I'm not too conversant with the Specific Protein Analysis panel, but from doing a little websearching, my best layman's guess is that it's some type of more specific testing that is done to gauge progression/regression of MCTD, which in Rachel's case seems to be falling, so this is still pretty good news, if so.

I tried to do a little webbrowsing with the keys words you provided and found these two links, but not sure how relevant they may be in her case….might be totally irrelevant! 😉 

http://www.springerlink.com/content/k7n8586625165137/

http://www.jimmunol.org/cgi/content/abstract/116/3/821

Things is….if the doc is measuring proteins…what proteins? Our own proteins or that of pathogens mimicking our own? Recently, someone posted a study that demonstrated that a marker said to be 95% specific to RA (anti-CCP) could actually cross-react with AI thyroid conditions and even in Lyme disease.

My LLMD measures my C3D regularly, which is a measure of circulating immune complexes (proteins in the blood). That is, both antibodies and antigens. He told me that this marker is positive in a good proportion of his Lyme patients and, when positive, he uses it to gauge the immune system's response to the ongoing infections. interestingly, Dr Brown's researcher also talked about circulating immune complexes in rheumatic patients using these as a measure of disease activity. I gather that much of the time, these tests are correlated to specific AI diseases, but no one knows really what they mean…they're present, a strong correlation is made and they become a marker for the disease in question. But, what if these proteins are actually pathogen proteins that are somehow activating certain disease-producing pathways in the body in predisposed people? In fact, in the Spring eBulletin, two articles were included…one tied bacterial cell wall remnants to cross-reacting with specific arthritis genes and bacterial enolase also cross-reacting with auto-antibodies specific to RA. Many of these stealth organisms seem to have elaborate cloaking systems….they attach to or enter our cells and mimic our own cell's outer surface proteins. They're releasing toxins at intervals, so the immune system goes after them, hell for leather, knows they are there, but can't find them, because they're hiding behind these outer surface protein cloaks.

 https://www.roadback.org/EmailBlasts/ebulletin_spring09.html

Just some late night ruminations, but if it makes you feel any better….when I saw an immunologist 2 months ago, he said don't even look at the auto-antibody markers…he said when your body is fighting “this kind” of infection (meaning Lyme), the autoantibodies are almost meaningless, because the body is in seek and destroy mode. It's looking for the infection and can't find it…so it's producing all these autoantibodies randomly. It was kind of refreshing to hear it described that way for a change.  

I don't know if any of this is relevant to you, but maybe it will help with some aspect of what you've been questioning?

Hugs to Rachel!

Peace, Maz

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