MS symptoms 'eased' by pregnancy

[Marco]

From BBC Scotland

Ongoing research looking at why the symptoms of some autoimmune diseases ease during pregnancy :

Researchers are carrying out clinical trials to find out if women with a range of autoimmune diseases could be helped by hormones found in pregnancy.

Women with a range of conditions, including multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and thyroid disease report dramatic improvements in their symptoms during pregnancy.

However many say their conditions return, or worsen, after childbirth.

Two clinical trials are being held in France and California

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-18164859

 

[SilverbladeTE]

Ah, I knew there were more good reasons to "spawn"!
Well at least I can still think about it


One of my all time fave movie lines

 

[Calathea]

I bet they're not including ME amongst the conditions they're researching. Pity. Still, let's hope this is well-conducted research and shows up something useful.

 

[TheMoonIsBlue]

I saw a video and article online a while back about a woman who was able to put her MS in remission with hormone therapy. Some special kind of estrogen I think? I guess it mimics pregnancy?

Some people with FM have said that just BC pills have helped their pain due to hormone flucuatations, but I am super scared to try the pill again.

The hormone therapy they were using for MS was different than just "the pill" though.

 

[Calathea]

I asked around about this a while ago, as the Pill is meant to make your body make it think it's pregnant. The short answer is that the Pill only does this in a fairly crude fashion, and the elements which cause remission in auto-immune diseases are not present in the Pill. Relaxin was one part of it, as I recall.

 

[TheMoonIsBlue]

Thats interesting Calathea. I always have know that hormone fluctuations have triggered a lot of my health problems, from the time I was in my teens. But the pill provided minimal help. My PMS may have been a little less severe but I felt much moodier overall.

I would be willing to work with someone super smart with hormones to try and create this situation of mimicking pregnancy to see if it helps.

I took that pill Yasmin, or Yaz, for years, and now there are commericals on all the time for lawsuits against the drug manufacturer!

 

[Marco]

One of the reasons I posted this was that I thought I recalled some anecdotes here that some ME/CFS folks' symptoms improved during pregnancy. I may have been mistaken.

Its also an under researched area and what information there is is equivocal :

The largest study of childbearing-age ME/CFS patients (86 women, representing 252 pregnancies before and after illness onset), by Drs. Richard Schacterle and Anthony Komaroff at Harvard Medical School, found that of the women who already had ME/CFS, 41% reported no change in their symptoms during pregnancy and 30% improved, while 29% worsened. The researchers couldn’t pinpoint the factors associated with these differences.

•Another finding was that maternal and infant outcomes of pregnancies after ME/CFS onset were not “systematically” worse than those before – although, subject to further investigation, first trimester spontaneous miscarriages may be more frequent than for normal mothers.

•Additionally, Dr. Klimas reports improvement and in some cases total remission of symptoms during all of the 20 ME/CFS pregnancies she has managed (albeit sometimes with more severe than normal early nausea). Dr. Bateman says all of the 6 pregnancies she has observed felt less ill, and Dr. Lapp reports 25 of his 27 pregnant ME/CFS patients felt better. He suggests this may be associated with immune and hormonal changes during pregnancy

http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=13780

Not enough data I'm afraid to support a clear suspicion of ME/CFS as an autoimmune disease

 

[SilverbladeTE]

PS
sorry if my levity seemed bad, folks, just well you know me!

Over the years there's been several items showing affects of pregnancy on autoimmune diseases
since it drastically alters a woman's hormnal and possibly immune "clock", it would help (or hinder) ME as well?

 

[Calathea]

It can go either way with ME, from what I've heard. A substantial number of women improve dramatically when pregnant, but a fair number get worse. Unfortunately, pregnancy isn't just something you can undergo purely as a health treatment - I don't think anyone would want us as surrogates!

 

[TheMoonIsBlue]

It can go either way with ME, from what I've heard. A substantial number of women improve dramatically when pregnant, but a fair number get worse. Unfortunately, pregnancy isn't just something you can undergo purely as a health treatment - I don't think anyone would want us as surrogates!

Not to mention the baby still has to COME OUT some way

 

[Valentijn]

http://www.prohealth.com/library/showarticle.cfm?libid=13780

Not enough data I'm afraid to support a clear suspicion of ME/CFS as an autoimmune disease

Too bad they used CDC criteria ... hard to guess how many had ME versus chronic fatigue.

 

[TheMoonIsBlue]

If their condition returns or worsens after childbirth I hope they have 24/7 help with the baby!

It would also seem likely that many with ME would have issues with post partum depression given our usually already abnormal reactions to hormone fluctuations that happen just with the menstrual cycle.

 

[roxie60]

The one pregnancy I had was the best I felt ever, had more energy, did something to my hair (would no longer take a perm,not sure relevant). Sadly miscarried week 13. Now no children.

 

[Glynis Steele]

Hope it's ok for me to post this here, I wasn't sure whether to start a new thread with this one. It does not mention any particular condition, but I thought it was interesting anyways. T cells mentioned.

Pregnancy: Why Mother's Immune System Does Not Reject Developing Fetus as Foreign Tissue

ScienceDaily (June 7, 2012) — Researchers at NYU School of Medicine have made an important discovery that partially answers the long-standing question of why a mother's immune system does not reject a developing fetus as foreign tissue.

"Our manuscript addresses a fundamental question in the fields of transplantation immunology and reproductive biology, namely, how do the fetus and placenta, which express antigens that are disparate from the mother, avoid being rejected by the maternal immune system during pregnancy?" explained lead investigator Adrian Erlebacher, MD, PhD, associate professor of pathology and a member of the NYU Cancer Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. "What we found was completely unexpected at every level."
The researchers discovered that embryo implantation sets off a process that ultimately turns off a key pathway required for the immune system to attack foreign bodies. As a result, immune cells are never recruited to the site of implantation and therefore cannot harm the developing fetus.....

......"This is a very exciting finding for us because it gives a satisfying explanation for why the fetus isn't rejected during pregnancy, which is a fundamental question for the medical community with clear implications for human pregnancy," Dr. Erlebacher said. "It also reveals a new modality for controlling T cell trafficking in peripheral tissues that could provide insight into a myriad of other conditions and diseases."

Follow link for full article:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120607142244.htm