@nandixon
Very interesting. I also tried famotidine (see
this post), but felt a lot worse on it (instantly became very mentally vague).
I think I will add
cimetidine (Tagamet) to my list of promising drugs to try.
I did not know
cimetidine decreases T-reg activity. In
this study it says that:
Experimentally, cimetidine, an H2-receptor antagonist, has been shown to enhance a variety of immunologic functions both in vivo and in vitro because of its inhibitory effects on suppressor-cell function. Successful tumor immunotherapy, as well as some protection from infection, has been reported in experimental animals.
Patients receiving cimetidine have been shown to exhibit enhanced cell-mediated immunity as evaluated by increased response to skin-test antigens, restoration of sensitivity following development of acquired tolerance, and increased responses of lymphocytes to mitogen stimulation.
Because of its inhibitory effect on suppressor function, cimetidine treatment may be deleterious in patients with organ transplant and autoimmune disorders.
It says
here that:
Cimetidine blocks histamine's ability to stimulate suppressor T lymphocyte [ie, T-reg cell] activity and to inhibit natural killer (NK) cell activity and interleukin-2 production.
IL-2 is of course a Th1 cytokine.
Possibly this NK cell boosting effect of cimetidine may also explain its benefits. Two studies found that in cancer patients where there was low NK activity, cimetidine boosted NK function: cimetidine augmented natural killer activity in ovarian cancer patients,
1 and in patients with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia.
1 Cimetidine did not boost NK activity in health patients with normal NK function.
Though ranitidine also seems to boosts NK cell activity, in postoperative conditions,
1 and you found that you felt worse on ranitidine (though this feeling worse might be due to other actions that ranitidine has in the body).
If it is the NK activity boosting effect of cimetidine that is providing most of this drugs benefits in ME/CFS, then there are quite a few NK activity boosting supplements that might offer similar benefits: see
this post. I have tried taking cocktails of the most potent NK boosting supplements, and do quite quickly (in a few days) feel a little bit better while taking them, but no spectacular improvements.
I note in
this Wikipedia article that "
the H2 receptor antagonists are a class of drugs used to block the action of histamine on parietal cells." It just so happens that in Dr Chia's stomach biopsy
study on ME/CFS patients, he found the parietal cells of the stomach were chronically infected with enteroviruses. Whether that has any significance, I don't know. Perhaps the antagonism of the H2 receptor on these parietal cells is somehow modulating the enterovirus infection; but I don't know what the mechanism would be.