Posted by Fonzie on December 27, 2002 at 23:09:45:
In Reply to: Re: Autoimmunity & Regulatory Cells posted by Mike Akins on December 27, 2002 at 19:56:19:
Mike, thank you for your detailed explanation.
I have an autoimmune disease called alopecia areata, where the target of the immune cells are our own hair follicles. This condition can progress from a single, small bald patch into total hair loss (alopecia universalis) in a matter of weeks. Cortisone can usually control the course of the disease, but unfortunately it has far too many side-effects.
Having this condition (and being afraid of developing a total hair loss in the future) pushed me into a broad research on immunology, and somewhere along the way I bumped into TF. Actually I think one day I got to a site which said something like "TF is recommended for autoimmune diseases" and below had a large list with all the autoimmune diseases, including "autoimmune alopecia".
Do you know if there was any experience using TF in this autoimmune alopecia areata? If so, what was the outcome? What about patients with psoriasis? (good treatments for psoriasis are generally good treatments for alopecia areata).
It's a pity that there are no double blind trials using TF in autoimmune diseases, I'm really curious to see what results it would achieve. About your "clinical" experience with autoimmune diseases, have any of the patients actually gone into remission?
I am looking forward to see the future TF research on the specific mechanisms of immune modulation... It would be nice to know how it would effect the specific subset of regulatory cells, and the cytokine environment as well.
I agree with your view of the "transfer factor soup" acting in a broader way, and one of the reasons I am particularly interested in your product is because I never had colostrum from my mother, and throughout my life my immune system has given me nothing but trouble. I relate the two situations, and so I would guess TF is probably of great benefit to people like me.
One last question: do you know if there is any compatibility problem between TF and a medical treatment called intravenous immunoglobulins?