There's a new study out of Belgium that may help with CFS/FMS diagnosis and treatment! It examines the ratio of Th1 and Th2 lymphocites in urine [those are "T helper" cells]. We fall in the group of those with high Th2 cells, so it's won't be specific enough to actually diagnose our syndromes as separate from some others, but it will show proof of being in an active disease state. Plus ultimately it can be available as a pretty simple color-based test. The part we're most interested in is that they tested almost 500 CFS/ME patients to see what colors their urine showed. 18-24% were neutral, 39-41% were moderate, and 35-43% were "far" Th2. I interpret that to mean that less than a quarter would show up as a false negative in terms of proving illness. Since researchers have been slow to determine what the subsets are, that group may have a different disease pathway not related to T helper cells. The other good news is that only 3% of healthy controls showed any moderate color change, and only 1% showed the far range. So normal folks basically do not experience this T helper cell problem. The test can be repeated frequently to see how effectively different treatments are working for the patients, and which treatments might fall into categories they should try. Note that Th2 is involved in humoral immunity (noncellular components of blood such as plasma & lymph) as well as mucosal immunity and allergy. Hopefully this will lead to more research exploring the lymph and allergy problems so many of us are plagued with. http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?
libid=16823 http://www.academicjournals.org/JMLD/PDF/pdf%202012/Feb/
Roelant%20and%20%20De%20Meirleir.pdf Post edited by: Beached, at: 02/17/2012 12:13 PM Dancing on the edge is the only way to be.
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