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New Autoantibodies Found In A Small Group Of Potsies


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Guest mattgreen

Great find. This hasn't appeared on Pubmed and as I am collecting auto-antibodies in which I should like tested, this is very helpful.

Also, is there a panel from any of the Center's of Excellence that test for these auto-antibodies and include the testing for AAG (nAChR), etc?

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I am colllecting autoimmune data to take along next month to my new Immunologist too.

With articles like this, when you present it to Immunologists who do not know much about POTs but hopefully they will understand what this means on a autoimmune level.

Again when you present this type of data, what would they be able to offer as possible treatment if any and of course depending on blood results.

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You will note that in most of the studies looking at autoantibodies in pots the levels of titers are only just minutely over normal, suggesting that if anything its more likely an epiphenonema rather than pathophysiological.

For those with the ACHR POTS, it was noted in a case study that disease activity was correlated with ACHR titer. I do think inflammation is important in POTS in the sense of an overall immune mediated reaction, whether the specific autoantibodies are important or not I don't know as there are perhaps other autoantibodies now being shown associated with POTS. However, given that people's experience on this board with Prednisone or hydrocortisone has been good (minus the side effects) I'm liking the evidence for autoimmune pathophysiology.

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For those with the ACHR POTS, it was noted in a case study that disease activity was correlated with ACHR titer. I do think inflammation is important in POTS in the sense of an overall immune mediated reaction, whether the specific autoantibodies are important or not I don't know as there are perhaps other autoantibodies now being shown associated with POTS. However, given that people's experience on this board with Prednisone or hydrocortisone has been good (minus the side effects) I'm liking the evidence for autoimmune pathophysiology.

At least for me, I had a panel of autoantibody testing done (sent off to Mayo). None of these came back positive, but maybe they are all for other known disorders. I do agree that it seems to be some type of inflammation/autoimmune pathophysiology at the root of at least many cases, as in my own experience I had wonderful results from a tiny dose (1 mg, twice a day) of Dexamethasone. Both my migraines and my dysautonomia symptoms were practically non-existent for the entire time I was on it, and even for a little while after. I didn't really have any side-effects at this dosage, that I could tell in the short term. I had Prednisone to attempt to stop migraines previously, which it did - but it made my sweating issues worse. It was a larger dose, too, FWIW.

My guess is that we have a few different "targets" at play, depending on the type of POTS involved. The recent article seems to indicate alpha and/or beta receptors as the immune targets. This makes a lot of sense for certain subgroups, and these are novel tests (not part of the Mayo panel). A lack of response, an excess response, or excess amount of triggering substances in serum - all seem like logical reactions to interference with these critical autonomic receptors.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Is it perhaps possible that instead of one specific autoantibody being way too high as in most definable autoimmune diseases, we have many that are moderately too high? This would then account for the wide array of different symptom manifestations in POTS... yes? Some people might have higher levels of one than another or some have no antibodies to certain receptors etc...

I know in my case I have Graves antibodies and Hashimotos antibodies all just within range but much higher than normal persons.

The next step from here would then try to understand why we have a cluster of autoimmune antibodies too high - and go from there... Some sort of immune dysfunction at the cytokine level? Or is it from our malfunctioning nervous systems? I really don't know. But we need to figure this out.

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