Health Boards
Wed-07-07-2021, 06:53 AM
(Wed-07-07-2021, 02:18 AM)KatT Wrote: My rheumatologist is not concerned at all as it is caused by the medication and therefore normal that it's low. Then again, my rheumatologist told me yesterday that having a pleural effusion and pneumothorax is just an inconvenience of lupus ? should he be concerned if it gets too low? I assume yes but what is considered too low???
He pays more attention to my liver and kidney function. This is why he changed my medication at the beginning of March and the reason why I went back in the normal range.
At least I get the results the day after the blood test and consult Dr. Google as to what is normal and what abnormal results can mean....especially when something that was normal is now abnormal.
On the results site, I can even view the trend of the results which is nice and very useful
I also have a spreadsheet with all my values, which is indeed very convenient.
What is too low?
0.7 is the low limit over here with us in the guidelines for dermatologists, it recently went up from 0.5 to this 0.7
0.5 is already very low..
0.4 is really on the edge
0.3 is intolerable…..
What happens if lymphs are too low? Well you will get vulnerable for viral infections, and the most dangerous one is the JC-virus.
…… no not the Jesus Christ virus, but the John Cunningham virus. This causes a viral infection in the brain, called PML, Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy, it is a BSE-like infection and may finally lead to death.
That is e.g. why everyone of the people on DMF have a regular checkup of their lympho’s, but e.g. people on MTX should have this checked also.
Most adults carry the JC-virus, but as long as you lympho’s are okay, that is that your immunesystem is working well, it can easily keep the virus under control.