Gingergrrl
Senior Member
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The researchers found lowered intracellular calcium. Lowering it further (e.g. by blockage) is maybe not the right thing to do...
This is my feeling as well and it seems to me (regardless what this illness, or group of illnesses, will ultimately be called), that people who *improve from Calcium Channel Blockers are in a different subgroup from those who worsen or cannot tolerate CCB's (like me). I am so glad that the Australian research team is studying this issue.
L-type calcium channels and TRPM3 are different (how exactly, please don't ask ).
Don't worry, I was not going to ask, but I wish I had your brain ... One thing I still don't have an answer to is how they test if someone has an autoantibody to the L-type Calcium Channel? It seems that the L-type autoantibodies can only be tested for within research and that there is no commercial test (like there is for the N-type and P/Q type). I wonder about this for practical reasons, for example Propofol (anesthesia) blocks the L-type calcium channel (but how would you know if you have autoantibodies to the L-type if there is no test, so it is probably better to just completely avoid this anesthesia in absence of having this info).
As you know, in my case another calcium channel is affected, so that I start to think that many ways lead to Rome, i.e. different (let me call it) calcium channelopathies maybe lead to similar symptoms, maybe even to very similar pathomechanisms. Because if one part in the calcium signaling cascade is affected, the rest may be too.
This makes sense to me and maybe some day there will be an illness called "Calcium Channelopathy" that is then broken into subgroups depending on which channel is affected and for what reasons and what symptoms it causes. I am told that I have a calcium channelopathy but in practical terms, the only illness I know of that matches with this is "LEMS" (which is a decent match for my symptoms prior to treatment but definitely not a complete or full match).
This isn't known yet. It could be autoimmunity, it could be "mutated" channels, it could be something else (viruses?).
Thank you and that makes total sense (that it could be a mutation, virus, etc, and not only autoimmunity). I am going to remember this part now.
Not many human calcium channels can be researched, human NK cells seem to be suited (at least this is how I understood a researcher who explained to me the tests they will be doing on "my" calcium channel).
So do all cells have Calcium Channels but, for whatever reason, the NK cells are better suited to be studied for these types of tests/research? (sorry if this is a stupid question )
It would make sense to call a calcium channel that produces a dysfunctional calcium signal (and which leads to symptoms/disease) a "calcium channelopathy" , wouldn't it?
It makes sense to me but I was not sure if it was accurate. Prior to 2016 when I was diagnosed with this autoantibody on Mayo test, I had never heard of any of these terms and it was like learning a new language (that I am still learning )