If somebody was having issues with a weakened immune system, and also dealing with a chronically higher baseline level of inflammation, are there any known ways to strengthen the immune system while reducing or at least not increasing baseline inflammation? Is that even possible or is some level of inflammation unavoidable?

Would it depend on the specific inflammatory factors that are already causing the higher baseline response?

I know there’s some research about running reducing inflammation, but it also triggers some inflammation? Is the acute inflammation triggered by running tied to longer term reductions in inflammation?

  • Contramuffin@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    That makes sense, but unfortunately in a frustratingly unhelpful way. NF-kB is the central mediator of cellular immunity. What that means is that everything that needs an immune response triggers NF-kB and everything immunity-related gets activated due to NF-kB. Likewise, TNFa is the prototypical pro-inflammatory cytokine. It’s remarkably good at triggering immune responses in a wide variety of cells, and every immune response that I know involves TNFa in some way.

    In other words, having inflammatory symptoms be caused by NF-kB>TNFa is less of a “that’s an interesting pathway” and more of a “yeah, of course NF-kB and TNFa would be involved, what’s new?”

    The concern is that we don’t really know what’s activating NF-kB in the first place, and so as a result you can’t really fix the core problem. And because NF-kB and TNFa are involved in basically every immune process, it’s hard to tell if these proteins are the ones actually responsible for causing your symptoms. You’d be operating on a hunch, essentially. Though I will say that your unusually nondescript and broad symptoms do seem roughly in line with what I would expect from TNFa signaling.

    All that to say, I’m not a doctor and I have no experience with translating knowledge into practicable therapies, so definitely talk to a doctor about it. But TNFa is very easy to detect in your blood, and if TNFa is causing your symptoms, then it’s really easy to just check to see if you’ve got high TNFa in your blood when you’re taking the antibiotics vs. when you’re not. If you had the money, you could even buy a test kit yourself and get an answer in a single day, assuming you know how to use the kit

    • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOPEnglish
      2·
      4 days ago

      Yeah but not every anti-inflammatory is going to inhibit NF-kB equally, so having something to target with inhibition is more helpful than just advice to avoid inflammation.

      https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15489888/

      Overall these results indicate that aspirin and ibuprofen are least potent, while resveratrol, curcumin, celecoxib, and tamoxifen are the most potent anti-inflammatory and antiproliferative agents of those we studied.

      You’d be operating on a hunch, essentially. Though I will say that your unusually nondescript and broad symptoms do seem roughly in line with what I would expect from TNFa signaling.

      Unfortunately an educated hunch is about as much as I think I can expect as of now bc the only doctor who isn’t just dismissing me is kind of at that point, and since he can’t figure it out, he’s open to suggestions.

      And also having TNF-a levels tested isn’t anything somebody has suggested previously. It took me going back and forth between March and April to even get in to see an allergist to measure my tryptase levels bc I assumed it was histamines. Turns out it wasn’t.