Rheumatoid arthritis

[Guest guest]

I mentioned in one of my replies to the replies to 's post that there is

increasing wonder if lyme arthritis is really a special case of rheumatoid

arthritis where the original trigger happens to be known.

It is very unusual to know the specific trigger of an individual case of

rheumatoid arthritis - except where taht trigger is lyme disease. Other

suspected triggers, such as strep infections, may have come and gone without

being treated, or been treated but never diagnosed. Lyme disease does not

often develop and then go away on its own, nor get treated without being

diagnosed.

A leading cause for the wonder is that not only does lyme arthritis act exactly

like rheumatoid arthritis, but like rheumatoid arthritis, it way

disproportionately affects people who have the HLA DR 4 immune marker, and, less

often, another marker.

The HLA histocompatibility complex are physical configurations of proteins on

the surface of white blood cells, that affect how the immune system responds to

any particular disease. They can match in different ways the configurations of

proteins on the surface of disease-causing organisms. They are called the HLA

histocompatibility complex, because it happens to be critical to match them for

organ transplants. Because my grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis, I

volunteered to be a bone marrow donor through a program where I didn't have to

pay the usual steep fee to be HLA typed - and then learned ot my dismay that the

initial screening is only the less expensive typing of HLA-A and HLA-B antigens.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease. Its causes are poorly

understood, but it is generally thought that it is initially triggered by some

infection, maybe strep. Once its mechanism is turned on, it has a life of its

own, and recurs throughout life. The fact that it very disproportionately

affects people with certain HLA markers suggests that it has somethign to do

with how the immune system reacts to some germ.

It occurred to me that since people with lyme disease arthritis very likely

really have the same problem, and this does not seem to even be the most

troublesome autoimmune problem of lyme disease, people might be interested in my

grandmother's experience.

She was treated using a strategy that was experimental in her day, became hard

to get, was not available for awhile, and may possibly be back in a new

incarnation as a different experiment.

My grandmother developed rheumatoid arthritis in the late 1930's, and was

bedridden for several years. Being strong willed, she would try to do

excercises and get up and so forth, but to no avail.

Noone ever knew what triggered it. In future years, she had maybe a dozen

discrete attacks, and otherwise was free of it. I have been told they were

always triggered by stress, to which my grandmother seems to have been unusually

susceptible. For instance, a two week or so visit to the home of her other

daughter, who she loved dearly, a few hundred miles away, was a repeated

trigger. It is almost certain that she had a mild case of her mother's bipolar

disorder. For sure someone passed that gene on. She certainly had a very

classic case of its temperament. She somewhat alternated periods of unusual

productivity, creativity, and accomplishment, with strange, inexplicable periods

of having no energy at all, and tiring very easily.

I do not remember whether my grandmother developed rheumatoid arthritis before

or after my mother had scarlet fever - both happened when my mother was very

small. I think my mother had scarlet fever when she was four and the long bout

of rheumatoid arthritis had already happened, but I am not sure and I may have

conflicting accounts. Scarlet fever is caused by the strep germ, and it

matters whether my grandmother could also have contracted that germ. It also

matters whether the strain of caring for my mother when the family was already

under stress because of the Depression could have triggered the attack.

It seems the family doctor was inclined to try experimental treatments. When

my two or four year old mother was close to dying of scarlet fever and noone

knew what else to try, he told my grandmother, I have something I can try, it is

rather experimental. The experimental drug, ca 1936, was penicillin, and it

saved my mother's life.

He ahd an experimental treatment for my grandmother's rheumatoid arthritis, too.

She ahd been bedridden for atleast two years, and nothing was working. He gave

her some kind of serum made from horse serum. It worked very dramatically.

Every attack my grandmother had thereafter, she would send for that serum, which

was increasingly hard to obtain. It got to the point where only my

grandmother's assertive and obstinate personality accomplished obtaining it.

It always completely cured the attack - not to be seen again for a few more

years.

I don't know what was in the serum, and neither do my mother nor my aunt, but I

have recently seen discussions of experiments involving an idea that sounds

somewhat similar. I am wondering how it would work on lyme's antics.

Yours,

Dora