CD57 - immune system suppression

This is a site I found interesting and if you scroll down it has a short article on CD57. It explains what it is. I decided to copy and paste that particular article but included the site in case anyone wants to read it.

"Dr. R. Stricker: Using the CD57 Natural Killer Cell Marker to Measure Treatment Progress

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd==Retrieve&db==PubMed&list_uids=.088407&dopt=«stract

One of the difficult things about treating chronic Lyme patients is figuring out when to stop antibiotics, since the antibody and PCR tests are so unreliable. Dr. Stricker has been doing research that measures the CD57 Natural Killer (NK) Cell levels as a way of determining if a chronic lyme patient is getting better. (The CD57 Natural Killer Cell is an aggressive white blood cell or "lymphocyte" that seeks out invading germs and destroys them.) It appears that Bb and all the coinfections somehow disable the production of the CD57 natural killer cells. (The "Stricker Panel," which is ordered by many Lyme Literate Physicians measures this immune system marker, among others.)

www.anapsid.org/lyme/strickerpanel.html

In his study of 89 chronic Lyme patients over a year, he found that patients with chronic Lyme disease and very low CD57 NK levels have significantly more coinfections, delayed diagnosis, more neurologic disease and persistent immunologic defects, compared to patients with higher CD57 NK levels.

He talked about how the Bb organism has more than 1,500 genes, 132 of which are functioning genes, making it about six times more complex than the Syphilis spirochete. Bb evades the immune system with mutations, physical seclusion, and secreted factors. Scientists have just discovered the first toxic secretion by Bb, Porin (OMS28), which it probably uses to punch holes in cell membranes. http://iai.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/72/11/6279 "