• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Creating pathogen-targeted chick egg yoke antibodies to cure ME/CFS

Messages
93
"What's Jaime doing?"
"Oh, the usual injection of a blood sample into her duck. She has to catch it first. It's hard with her ME."
"...should we go help her?"
"...give it a few minutes."
Ha. This is great. I'm also going to experiment with this (chicken though) and this is pretty much how I imagine it going down. I'm actually very encouraged at the amount of data @Hip has been able to bring to the table. You are a ME/CFS rockstar. Even if this doesn't work it will be an excellent story one day and will show the world how damn desperate people like me are to find a treatment.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
What I am not clear about is whether this chicken IgY technique can be made to work for ME/CFS viruses.

I am not sure if the concentration of virus in an ME/CFS patient's blood would be high enough to stimulate IgY antibody production, when a drop of blood is intramuscularly injected into the chicken.

If you take the case of chronic enterovirus, PCR blood tests on patients with enterovirus-associated ME/CFS are negative more often than positive. Now Dr Chia says here that RT-PCR has a detection threshold of 80–800 viral copies/ml. So the fact that PCR often comes out negative suggests that ME/CFS patients' enteroviral loads in the blood are going to be just a bit below this threshold, which will be around a few hundred viral copies/ml (ie, just a few hundred enteroviral particles per ml of blood).

Now a drop of blood is around 1/25 of a ml, so in one drop of ME/CFS patient's blood, you are only going to get around 5 or 10 viral particles!

I am no expert, but that seems far too small a number to create an immunological reaction in the chicken (unless those few particles seed an infection in the chicken). By comparison, 1 ml of rotavirus vaccine contains around 1 million viral particles (ref: 1).

Vaccines also usually contain adjuvants (such as aluminum hydroxide) which boost the immune response, to try to ensure that you get an immunological reaction to the vaccine.


For viruses, I think the only way we could get an immunological reaction from a chicken is to try to infect the chicken with the virus. This could be done by putting your saliva on the chicken's food and in it's drinking water each day (with the chlorine removed from the water, otherwise it may inactivate the virus).
 
Last edited:

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Do try to put a bit of baking soda into the yolk. It might give those antibodies a fighting chance...

Indeed, a pinch of baking soda might be helpful to minimize the effects of stomach acid, as would eating the egg yoke on an empty stomach, to minimize stomach acid levels.

With bovine colostrum, which contains IgG, is it is recommended to take that on an empty stomach, so that more of the IgG remains intact.


One could turn the egg yoke into a delicious daily zabaglione drink (Italian eggnog) — probably best to leave out the alcohol though, as perhaps this might damage the IgY protein.
 
Last edited:

Jonathan Edwards

"Gibberish"
Messages
5,256
Maybe @Jonathan Edwards can give his take on this.

I don’t quite understand the transfer of antibodies. It sounds like it's a legtimate treatment with all the citations but that's no guarantee and it's over my head to figure that out.

If there is credible science behind this treatment would this translate to the treatment posed by the author of the blog? Are there dangers taking it upon yourself to try this. I think I can guess the answer to this last question.

I wouldn't be surprised if any treatments should only be given in a clinical setting, under strict protocals and not appropriate as an experiment to do in your backyard.

Thanks. As always when/if you have the time as it's not my intention to disrupt your schedule.

It is all complete nonsense. There is no understanding of how antibodies actually achieve their effector mechanism. I could list a dozen reasons why it makes no sense but it really isn't worth bothering.
 
Messages
93
So, I'm getting the sense here that this is a little far fetched and unfounded and I should hold off on the poultry injections? I have read a number of places that runny yokes are a good source of nutrients. Maybe that is what cured her! Thanks everyone for the input.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
It is all complete nonsense.

May I ask, when you say it makes no sense, are you referring to this Swedish ME/CFS patient's method of injecting a drop of her blood into a chicken's muscle to stimulate antibodies? Or referring to the general idea of using IgY to fight infection in mammals?

If the latter, how can we explain this study, which found that injecting chicken egg IgY into dogs protected them from otherwise fatal parvovirus infection? IgY does appear to have an antiviral effect in mammals, if that study can be relied on.



There is no understanding of how antibodies actually achieve their effector mechanism.

Do you mean the fact that IgY does not bind to Fc receptors, and so although IgY can attach to pathogens, IgY cannot activate mammalian immune cells (such as natural killer cells) via their Fc receptors to do the job of destroying the pathogen?

But what about the more simple pathogen neutralization ability of antibodies, that occurs just by antibodies binding to the pathogen? It says here that:
The simplest and most direct way in which antibodies can protect from pathogens or their toxic products is by binding to them and thereby blocking their access to cells that they might infect or destroy. This is known as neutralization and is important for protection against bacterial toxins and against pathogens such as viruses, which can thus be prevented from entering cells and replicating.

So the fact that IgY can bind onto pathogens should be enough to thwart them.



If it were possible to get a chicken's immune system to make IgY antibodies to coxsackievirus B, and you consumed daily the IgY-containing egg yoke from that chicken, wouldn't that have a significant antiviral effect on the coxsackievirus B infection present in the stomach and intestines, just by the fact that IgY binds to the virus?

Whether such intestinal antiviral action by IgY might have benefits for ME/CFS I don't know; but as far as I can see, in principle it should work.
 
Last edited:

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I am trying to come up with a better alternative to injecting a drop of your blood into a chicken's muscles, because as I pointed out earlier, one drop of ME/CFS patient's blood will probably contain just 5 or 10 viral particles, and that is most likely not going to be enough to stimulate the chicken's immune system to generate an antibody response, unless those 10 viral particles instigate an infection in the chicken — but that may not happen, because I am not really sure if the enteroviruses associated with ME/CFS (coxsackievirus B and echovirus) can infect chickens.

If we compare this situation to a vaccine, which is designed to create an antibody response: a viral vaccine will typically inject around 1 million deactivated viral particles, along with an adjuvant like aluminum hydroxide to stimulate the immune response to those viral particles. The virus is deactivated (with heat or formaldehyde), so cannot create an infection. But those 1 million deactivated viral particles appear to be enough to generate an antibody response. So I think we would need to aim to inject a similar amount of enteroviral particles into the chicken's muscle, otherwise you may not get any immune response.

It's different if you are injecting bacteria, because I should think that most bacteria will be able to instigate an infection in the chicken, which will then generate an antibody response. But with viruses, to instigate an infection, the virus has to be compatible with the cells in the host (the chicken).



So if we cannot instigate a viral infection in the chicken, I believe we would need to inject a large quantity of viral particles, like 1 million viral particles, in order to stimulate an antibody response.

But there is a hitch: for this to work, even if the ME/CFS-associated enteroviruses do not form a productive infection in the chicken, there would still need to be some degree of compatibility of these enteroviruses with the host's cells (the chicken's cells).

In particular, I believe it would be necessary for these enteroviruses injected into the chicken to undergo the process of viral attachment and viral entry into the host's cells (even if once they get into the cell, they cannot form a productive infection, due to incompatibility).

If the ME/CFS patient's enteroviruses injected into the chicken do not enter the chicken's cells by the process of viral attachment and viral entry, then as far as I can see, no antibodies will be formed.

This is because when viral particles enter the cell, they are chopped up into small proteins by enzymes in the cell, and these small viral proteins are then externally displayed to the immune system, via the cell's major histocompatibility complex II (MHC II), which is like an antenna on the outside surface of the cell.

The purpose of MHC II is to display and "advertise" the component proteins of a pathogen infecting a cell to the immune system, so that the immune system can create antibodies that target those proteins.

So if the enteroviruses injected into the chicken are not capable of entering into the chicken's cells, then they will not be chopped up and externally displayed on the MHC II, and thus no antibodies that target those enterovirus proteins will be created by the chicken's immune system. At least that's my understanding of how antibodies are generated.

Thus for this work for viruses, I think it all hinges on whether the virus can enter the chicken's cells.


Coxsackievirus B for example uses cellular receptors such as the coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR) to enter cells.

Chicken cells do posses CAR, but unfortunately in this study on coxsackievirus B infection it says that:
Chicken CAR did not mediate virus entry in vivo, so that hearts expressing chicken instead of mouse CAR were protected from infection and myocarditis.

So whereas mice are often used to study coxsackievirus B infection of the heart muscles (myocarditis), it seems that chicken muscle cells do not allow coxsackievirus B to enter them.

(Although it's not quite that straightforward, because in the study they did not use chickens, but transgenic mice expressing chicken CAR.)

Thus this is a bit of snag for our purposes.


Coxsackievirus B also infects epithelial cells (the cells the line the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts), but I could not find any info regarding whether coxsackievirus B can enter chicken epithelial cells.
 
Last edited:

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
In terms of antigen presentation — the process by which antigens from pathogens are presented to the immune system so that antibodies can be created to target those antigens — it occurred to me that if a virally infected human blood cell were injected into the chicken, then as that virally infected blood cell is eaten (phagocytized) by the chicken's macrophages, it is possible that viral antigens inside the human blood cell will get presented to the immune system by these macrophages.

Macrophages are antigen presenting cells that (via MHC II) display protein fragments (antigens) of the microbes or cells they eat, in order to stimulate the creation of antibodies that target those antigens. So if a chicken macrophage eats a human blood cell containing a viral infection, then possibly the chicken will create IgY antibodies to those viral antigens inside the human blood cell.

Coxsackievirus B infects up to 10% of B cells in the blood during acute infection (in mice at least). Ref: 1

So if we inject a drop of ME/CFS patient's blood into a chicken's muscles, it seems possible that virally infected human blood B cells eaten by chicken phagocytes might mediate the creation of antiviral IgY antibodies in the chicken — antibodies that will then appear in the chicken egg yoke.
 
Last edited:
Messages
93
So I was just reading the thread that you started about leaky gut and got to thinking. If CMV or an Enterovirus is being harbored mostly in the gut area, wouldn't ingesting the antiviral IgY antibodies make even more sense and possibly be even more powerful as it would be targeting that specific region? I've had Thrush, IBS and Nerve pain that is targeting in my bowel section along with other ME/CFS symptoms which leads me to believe that my gut is being highly effected.

On a separate topic that probably belongs in the leaky gut thread; the one thing that I don't get is that I've seen one of the "top" gastro specialist in the US along with 3 other GI docs and there has been no mention of leaky gut even after I asked to get tested for it. Looking at the tests I've taken I can't really tell if I was accurately tested for Leaky Gut. These are the tests she ran. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

BREATH TEST:
03/01/2016 PROTEIN ELECTROPHORESIS, SERUM-
03/01/2016 ANTI GAD 65 ANTIBODIES-
03/01/2016 COENZYME Q10, REDUCED & TOTAL-
03/01/2016 C - REACTIVE PROTEIN-
03/01/2016 HEMOGLOBIN A1C-
03/01/2016 Paraneoplastic Autoantibody Eval, SERUM-
03/01/2016 Vitamin D, 25-Hydroxyvitamin-
03/01/2016 VITAMIN B6-
03/01/2016 VITAMIN B12
03/01/2016 TSH-
03/01/2016 VITAMIN B1, PLASMA
 
Last edited:

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
If CMV or an Enterovirus is being harbored mostly in the gut area, wouldn't ingesting the antiviral IgY antibodies make even more sense and possibly be even more powerful as it would be targeting that specific region?

Yes, I agree, ingested egg yoke IgY antibodies which will remain confined to the gut region may do a good job of combatting infections in the gut.

But as detailed in this post above, I think it may be tricky to get the chicken's immune system to create IgY antibodies to viruses that do not infect chickens. But I just don't have the knowledge about immunology to know for certain.

The only idea that occurred to me was the one mentioned just above, where if a human blood cell (or an mucous membrane epithelial cell taken from an infected region of your throat) is infected with cytomegalovirus, enterovirus, or whatever human virus you want to target, then when such infected human cells are injected into the chicken's muscle, and are subsequently eaten by the chicken's macrophages, perhaps the chicken immune system will then make antibodies to target the viral proteins found in the infected cell. But that's just my speculation based on very little knowledge about how the immune system works.

Those biohacking spaces that you mentioned you were interested in; might there be someone there with expertise who can offer some insight into this?



I've seen one of the "top" gastro specialist in the US along with 3 other GI docs and there has been no mention of leaky gut even after I asked to get tested for it.

The lactulose/mannitol test is used to test for increased intestinal permeability. Genova diagnostics do one. Increased intestinal permeability is common in those with IBS-D.
 
Messages
93
Those biohacking spaces that you mentioned you were interested in; might there be someone there with expertise who can offer some insight into this?
There may be but I'm currently in a different part of the US doing the HBOT until August. I'll check into it though as soon as I get back!
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
As well as fighting viruses in the gut, chicken egg IgY antibodies might also help fight potentially pathogenic bacteria in the digestive tract. From a Genova Diagnostics digestive stool analysis, I know in my intestines I have Staphylococcus aureus and Proteus mirabilis, which I understand can potentially have pathogenic effects when their populations become large.

I was trying to think of a way to extract these potentially pathogenic bacterial species in my gut from a stool sample, and carefully inoculate small quantities of these bacteria into the chicken muscle, in order to get the chicken to make antibodies against these bacteria. Then eating the antibody-containing eggs may help you control the bad bacteria in your intestines.

That might improve IBS symptoms, and may help ME/CFS as well.

But I can't think of a way to easily separate the pathogenic bacteria in the stool sample from the friendly bacteria such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium. You would not want to inject your friendly bacteria into the chicken's muscle, otherwise the chicken may also make antibodies which fight these friendly bacteria, which would probably be detrimental to the balance of your gut microbiota.

You'd want to create chicken IgY antibodies that target the bad bacteria in your gut, but not the good.


At least with bacteria, I think you can be fairly sure you are going to provoke a good antibody response in the chicken. You probably have to be careful to inject very small amounts of bacteria into the chicken muscle, otherwise you might create an abscess.
 
Last edited:
Messages
37
Location
Sweden
It is from my swedish blog. I am writing a lot about ME/CFS and Lyme Disease. My wife has been sick since 2008 in ME/CFS and Fibromyalgi. In february 2016 she got positive for Lyme and a lot of other infections. She is much better after 12 weeks IV antibiotics.

Please read this:
http://www.esciencecentral.org/jour...ic-resistance-2327-5073-1000194.php?aid=50989

Author is:
Hans Kollberg
Cystic Fibrosis Centre, University Children’s Hospital, Uppsala, Sweden

I am also doing a documentary with Lunik Film. It will be released in october/november 2016. You can already watch trailer one. You are able to choose english text in Youtube.

www.misdiagnosis.se

Read about 10-0

https://newsaboutdisease.wordpress.com/2016/05/01/misdiagnosis-documentary-released-this-autumn/
 
Last edited: