RA Blood tests

[Dunlop321]

Hi all,
I live in the UK and have moved around a 3 times in the last few years. each time I have had to change rheumy. Each rheumy seems to request different things on their blood tests which is really annoying and difficult for me to track my status. My most recent tests didn’t contain anti ccp, or esr. What are the other main RA markers I need to insist on.

On a good point, my RA factor had dropped from 315 in May 2014 to 164 last week. Is this just an anomaly or an improvement in the condition?

Overall I’m feeling a lot better and have noticed a big improvement. I have cut my Enbrel jab to 3 times per month, previously 4 and hope to keep gradually cutting.

[sandrabonfield]

Hello
It depends whether you are private or NHS. I go to a private GP so I ask him to do all of them to monitor for my own purpose.The rheumatologist said there was no point in re testing RF factor or ANA.
If I had not asked him to do them all, they would only have tested esr crp and liver function. Hope that helps
Sandra

[Maz]

@Dunlop321 wrote:

My most recent tests didn’t contain anti ccp, or esr. What are the other main RA markers I need to insist on.

On a good point, my RA factor had dropped from 315 in May 2014 to 164 last week. Is this just an anomaly or an improvement in the condition?

Overall I’m feeling a lot better and have noticed a big improvement. I have cut my Enbrel jab to 3 times per month, previously 4 and hope to keep gradually cutting.

Hi Dunlop,

The usual tests for RA here in the US are Anti-CCP, RF, ANA, SED rate and CRP. Not all of these will be positive in every RAer, but if they are, it’s not a bad idea to watch those numbers as they should be coming down over time (usually after some initial worsening from herxing). It’s also a good idea to get a CBC and metabolic panel run with liver and pancreatic enzymes now and again to ensure all is well.

That’s a pretty great result for your RF to have nearly halved in just 10 months! I would think it’s more than an anomaly…it’s improvement, considering your symptoms are also much improved. 🙂 It’s also pretty good going, considering you’re on a very low dose (less than a quarter of the usual DMARD dose of 100mg mino BID). Interestingly, you’re getting this improvement in spite of the fact that you’re also on a biologic. Saying this really because minocycline is a bacteriostatic antibiotic and it works by disabling the bugs, but a functioning immune system is needed for it to be fully effective for its anti-microbial effects. As such, it’s not unusual for someone on immunosuppressant therapy who is also using minocycline to take it at the higher daily dose in order to get the full DMARD effect. In your case, the mino might be working so well in this low, pulsed dose, because the biologic was not working so well for you at the time you began AP. I just checked back on your earlier posts and seemed like you had a pretty good herx going on at the outset, too, so this is also a good sign the biologic really hasn’t been doing too much for you either.

When tapering from any immunosuppressant, keeping other med doses stable is usually optimal, just so one know’s what’s-what. Quite handy that you are on such a low dose, as this allows room for tweaks in mino dose later, if you decide to go that way. Also, worth noting that as you begin to drop back on the biologic, you may get a bit of rebound flaring and herxing as your immune system gets back on track and starts recognizing foreign antigen again.

[Dunlop321]

Thanks Maz and Sarah

I

[Maz]

@Dunlop321 wrote:

I

[Anonymous]

I have the same problem here and also different laboratories in the same town use different rates and norms. One person from the laboratory told me that every lab establishes its norms on the average results of all patients. Strange.
The general doctors are being approached by the medical authorities if they request too many tests.
Linda L.

[Author]

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