proteins like immunoglobulins don't survive the digestion system in-tact...
Good point, I forgot about that aspect. A quick Google check finds
this study on IgY, which states that: "
all studies in humans, including infants, show, that there is no absorption from the intestine."
Although things may be slightly different in patients with intestinal hyperpermeability (leaky gut). I believe in leaky gut, LPS can be translocated across the intestine into the blood circulation (and intestinal LPS can also be translocated into the blood in the case of HIV infection
1). Now, some of the immunologically active immunoglobulin fragments
have been shown to be as small as 50 kDa in weight, which is smaller than the 100 kDa molecular weight of LPS. So if LPS can pass through the intestine in cases of leaky gut, perhaps so might IgY.
In
this study they found that
intranasally administered IgY extracted from egg yokes was effective in fighting influenza B infections
in the lung. That suggests at least some systemic absorption of IgY occurs intranasally. The study mentions something about intranasal lesions; so possibly those lesion were the route by which IgY was intranasally absorbed into the bloodstream.
That study, incidentally, found that each egg yoke produces around 77 mg of IgY antibodies.
But even if IgY is not systemically absorbed in the human gut, it could still have a potent antiviral effect just in the stomach and intestines, which may ameliorate ME/CFS symptoms. Remember that Dr Chia found a chronic enterovirus infection in the guts of ME/CFS patients. The gut is a major reservoir for enterovirus in the body.
And of course Prof Ian Lipkin thinks that ME/CFS might be caused by the gut microbiota.
Orally administered immunoglobulins survive transit through the stomach, as
this study found IgG is pretty resistant to degradation by stomach acid, and that orally administered IgG retains much of its neutralizing ability as it transits through the stomach and moves along the digestive tract. So I expect oral IgY is going to have significant antiviral and antibacterial effects along the entire length of the stomach and intestines.
This study says:
IgY possesses remarkable resistance to extreme pH values, temperature, and pepsin. IgY is stable at pH 4–9 and up to 65 °C in aqueous conditions, and it retains antigen-binding activity in the presence of pepsin at pH 4–6.
Why Injections of Chicken Egg IgY Might Work Better Than IVIG for Treating ME/CFS
I am not suggesting anybody should try the following, but it could represent a new avenue of research in terms of developing effective but inexpensive ME/CFS treatments.
I am wondering how feasible it would be to extract the IgY antibodies from the egg yoke by centrifuge, sterilize them, and then administer to ME/CFS patients by injection. This is precisely what they did in
this study using chicken egg IgY injections to treat parvovirus infection in dogs, and they had good results.
Let's consider how chicken egg IgY injections might compare to regular medical intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) therapy for ME/CFS, which is pretty expensive at around $25,000, and is only effective in a subset of ME/CFS patients.
IVIG typically uses 400 mg/kg of IgG, so that will be a total dose of around 30,000 mg of IgG for a patient. By comparison, chicken egg provides around 77 mg of IgY per yoke, so if you collected 90 eggs from your chicken, you'd get around 7,000 mg of IgY.
But remember, weight for weight, this IgY is probably going to be much more potent that regular IgG from IVIG, because the chicken IgY has been specifically tailored to target the virus driving your own ME/CFS, whereas the IgG from the intravenous immunoglobulin therapy has not been produced specifically for your virus.
In fact, it is quite possible that the reason standard medical IVIG is not effective for most ME/CFS patients is simply because the IVIG does not contain any antibodies that target the patient's particular ME/CFS-causing virus.
IVIG contains antibodies pooled from thousands of blood donors, and if none of those blood donors have the particular viral infection you have, and thus none of the donors are producing IgG antibodies to your virus, then IVIG is likely going to be ineffectual for your ME/CFS.
When it comes to enterovirus, there are 6 species of coxsackievirus B, and 32 species of echovirus, that could be driving your ME/CFS, and so there is no guarantee any of the IVIG blood donors will have your particular viral infection, and no guarantee that these donors will be making antibodies to the virus causing your ME/CFS.
Or even if a few blood donors did have your particular infection, their antibodies are going to be greatly diluted down in the IVIG therapy by all the antibodies from the other blood donors which inappropriately target the wrong infections. IVIG provides a very broad-spectrum set of antibodies, targeting a wide range of pathogens, rather than specifically-targeted antibodies tailored for your infection.
Whereas with this system of chicken egg yoke-derived IgY antibodies, you can be sure that there will be large quantities of IgY antibodies that specifically target your ME/CFS-causing pathogen (or pathogens, if there is more than one infection in your blood causing your ME/CFS).
