Interleukins

[judyinthesky]

With Long Covid, this seems to be a focus of some doctors, yet my ME specialist doesn't seem to see them as to important.

Has anyone measured their interleukins and treating them somehow?

Three are higher for me including TN
F, and IL2, 5 and 13.

 

[Wishful]

I did have a cytokine profile done once. A few were mildly elevated, but not in a pattern the immunologist was familiar with, so he didn't have any suggestions of what to do about them. No one knows how ME works, so trying to alter individual cytokines is just shooting in the dark.

If doctors are focusing on cytokines for Long Covid, it's probably because they don't know what to try, and cytokines are at least measurable so they can show patients some actual numbers which might make them feel a bit better than "I have no idea how to help you". If the patient actually does improve, the doctors can claim credit for whatever it was they prescribed, even if there's no way to prove that it had any effect.

 

[judyinthesky]

If anyone knows about patterns that are relevant, do share

 

[judyinthesky]

I did have a cytokine profile done once. A few were mildly elevated, but not in a pattern the immunologist was familiar with, so he didn't have any suggestions of what to do about them. No one knows how ME works, so trying to alter individual cytokines is just shooting in the dark.

If doctors are focusing on cytokines for Long Covid, it's probably because they don't know what to try, and cytokines are at least measurable so they can show patients some actual numbers which might make them feel a bit better than "I have no idea how to help you". If the patient actually does improve, the doctors can claim credit for whatever it was they prescribed, even if there's no way to prove that it had any effect.

Sure the last thing is to be considered, but would still say having them measured might be an interesting thing. But wonder how scientific it is. Lots of tests are also done in the community that are not relevant to doctors