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Hello everyone,
After following this thread for a while, i thought i'd chime in with my own issues since there are a lot of similarities here with my own case. In fact, i have always had rather low WBC (between 3000 and 4000 leucocytes usually) for around 10 years now, never figured out why, but it didn't really bother me too much in daily life so i let it slide. Fast forward to today and i am knee deep in plenty of issues, a lot of which seem auto-immune mediated but without a fixed diagnosis (positive ANA, negative ENA, Myasthenia Gravis antibodies which only tell me i got MG but don't explain the rest at all, dry mouth and eyes issues but no Sjogrens ABs and reactivated EBV constantly with corresponding symptoms like hot flashes, joint pains and ton of other stuff that can either be EBV or autoimmune symptoms).
Had 2 flux cytometries done over the last 2 years and turns out i have a CD4 lymphocytopenia mainly (around 300 cells/ml) with an inverted CD4/CD8 ratio hovering at 1 or now even under 1 since the last test.
Now, since doctors have no clue about what could be causing this, my 3 main theories right now are:
1) an autoimmune disease as the origin of the CD4 deficiency, sapping them, something like occult/sub-clinical lupus or maybe other ABs that haven't been detected yet
or
2) EBV just progressively sapping my CD4s and depleting them over the years with a pinch of extreme stress added to the mix since i've had the most stressful years of my life these last 5 years combined and we know stress depletes T cells (though not solely and not in this quantity but as a contributor). In this case an antiviral like Valtrex should make a difference but no doctor has agreed to this so far.
3) a genetic / innate deficiency which manifested around 10 years ago since before that my WBC counts were totally normal so i doubt any T cell deficiency was present then. I should mention i also have EDS which does not necessarily have a strong correlation with a weakened immune system, but there ARE a few sparse reports of people reporting similar issues without going into detail unfortunately.
Anyway, would love to hear feedback if any of you get anywhere with this issue, as it's really hard psychologically and mentally to live with an issue like this and no specialist anywhere really knows what to do with you
After following this thread for a while, i thought i'd chime in with my own issues since there are a lot of similarities here with my own case. In fact, i have always had rather low WBC (between 3000 and 4000 leucocytes usually) for around 10 years now, never figured out why, but it didn't really bother me too much in daily life so i let it slide. Fast forward to today and i am knee deep in plenty of issues, a lot of which seem auto-immune mediated but without a fixed diagnosis (positive ANA, negative ENA, Myasthenia Gravis antibodies which only tell me i got MG but don't explain the rest at all, dry mouth and eyes issues but no Sjogrens ABs and reactivated EBV constantly with corresponding symptoms like hot flashes, joint pains and ton of other stuff that can either be EBV or autoimmune symptoms).
Had 2 flux cytometries done over the last 2 years and turns out i have a CD4 lymphocytopenia mainly (around 300 cells/ml) with an inverted CD4/CD8 ratio hovering at 1 or now even under 1 since the last test.
Now, since doctors have no clue about what could be causing this, my 3 main theories right now are:
1) an autoimmune disease as the origin of the CD4 deficiency, sapping them, something like occult/sub-clinical lupus or maybe other ABs that haven't been detected yet
or
2) EBV just progressively sapping my CD4s and depleting them over the years with a pinch of extreme stress added to the mix since i've had the most stressful years of my life these last 5 years combined and we know stress depletes T cells (though not solely and not in this quantity but as a contributor). In this case an antiviral like Valtrex should make a difference but no doctor has agreed to this so far.
3) a genetic / innate deficiency which manifested around 10 years ago since before that my WBC counts were totally normal so i doubt any T cell deficiency was present then. I should mention i also have EDS which does not necessarily have a strong correlation with a weakened immune system, but there ARE a few sparse reports of people reporting similar issues without going into detail unfortunately.
Anyway, would love to hear feedback if any of you get anywhere with this issue, as it's really hard psychologically and mentally to live with an issue like this and no specialist anywhere really knows what to do with you
