Why Test for Predictive Antibody Screening- How Cyrex Array 5 Can Help

Many studies shows that autoimmune antibody can be elevated in the blood many years before symptoms occur.

Cyrex Labs have now developed their array #5, a comprehensive autoimmune screen that helps in the early detection of autoimmunity.

If detected early, natural and/or medical interventions can begin in order to minimize long-term illness and promote a better quality of life.

Multiple autoimmune antibodies against your bodies organs are tested in this panel due to the fact that more than 40% of those with auto-antibodies to one organ have auto-antibodies to other organs and tissues of the body.

The Cyrex Array #5 tests the gamut of autoimmune antibodies in order to minimize “missing” a potential autoimmune condition.

Transcript of Video
Hi Dr Hagmeyer and today we are going to talk about a test that can be extremely helpful for people who suffer with autoimmune disease. Autoimmune thyroid conditions such as Graves’ Disease and Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis are characterized by the presence of autoantibodies. What this means is that antibodies can be detected years before there are changes in thyroid hormone levels, and a person’s symptoms,
This is not only the case in thyroid disease, but with all autoimmune conditions. Autoimmune disease occur when the immune system systematically tags a tissue or a gland and attack it causing destruction to that tissue or gland. For many people, that are in the earlier stages of autoimmune disease, standard testing shows everything to be “normal”

Have you Been Told Everything looks “Normal” ?

These are the patients that are told, there is nothing wrong with them. They feel terrible, have brain fog, irritable, digestive problems, they can’t think straight, can’t focus, they are tired and run down all the time and yet they are dismissed by most physicians and told to take some antidepressants. What’s really happening in many of these cases, is that they are in the beginning stages of an autoimmune disorder. This is where the type of testing I am talking about is incredibly helpful to physicians who work with people who suffer with chronic health problems.

There is new evidence and new research that in many cases these autoantibodies can appear up to ten years before they the immune system starts gobbling up and in damaging a person’s tissues.

Based on this information, physicians like myself believe that it makes sense to do this preventative screening on everyone who has a family history of autoimmune disease. It is important for me to emphasize that just because you have a genetic predisposition to celiac disease, or Graves Disease or Hashimoto’s disease or Inflammatory Bowel disease doesn’t mean a person will automatically develop this disease. I tell you this because this is very much the mentality that many people still have today. 20 and 30 years ago, doctors would blame everything on our genetics. Your father had depression, or cancer, you’re going to have depression and cancer, your mother had thyroid disease or heart disease, you’re going to have thyroid disease and heart disease. Thankfully, how we take care of ourselves also play a large role in determining what diseases we develop and what genes get turned on. This is called epigenetics and if you simply Google “Genes are not your destiny”- you can read more about that.

So the Point of today’s video is to really bring to your attention that Silent Autoimmunity Shouldn’t Be Overlooked-

If you’re wondering why or what are the reasons for running this Autoimmune Predictive Antibody Screening The first reason is pretty obvious. research is pretty clear on this one.

#1 People with one autoimmune condition are more likely to develop others. So, if you have Graves’ Disease or Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis you have a greater likelihood of developing conditions such as Rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, MS or some other kind of autoimmune condition. One of the research paper I recently read, showed that people who have celiac disease have been found to have a 20% increase prevalence of type I diabetes. (1) So if you have an autoimmune disease, having a predictive antibody screening – Autoantibodies, can give insight into what you may be up against in the future.

Among autoimmune disorders, increased prevalence of CD has been found in patients with autoimmune thyroid disease, type 1 diabetes mellitus, autoimmune liver diseases and inflammatory bowel disease. Prevalence of CD was noted to be 1% to 19% in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, 2% to 5% in autoimmune thyroid disorders and 3% to 7% in primary biliary cirrhosis in prospective studies.

The Second reason you may want to consider this predictive antibody testing would have to do with your family. (2)

Let say you have celiac disease or Hashimoto’s disease or Crohns or some other autoimmune disease and so does your spouse. Because autoimmune disease are genetic, your children are at greater risk of developing one or more of these autoimmune disorders.

I was on the phone just last week with a woman who was in her 40’s and she had been struggling with Hashimoto’s, she was diagnosed several years ago, despite medication being increased and decreased, going on Synthroid, Levothyroxine, she still feels lousy. In conversation, she was concerned about her daughters. she has two little girls 12 and 9. Her oldest girl was starting to gain a lot of weight, she was showing signs of being tired all the time, her grades were slipping because she was having difficulty focusing and paying attention in school. The pediatrician told the mom, that there was nothing wrong with her 12 year old and that she was just growing and that she would just grow out of it. Give me a break!

So here what’s going to happen to this 12 year old girl… (this little girl might have just been you 10 15 or 20 years ago) This little girl in the next 10 years of her life is going to continue struggling with all the symptoms of her “misdiagnosed” and mismanaged hidden autoimmune thyroid disorder. When enough damage has been done to alter the function of her thyroid her TSH levels will be off, her doctor will put her on Synthroid or Levothyroxine or some other thyroid replacement hormone. Mind you, that given her family history of moms autoimmune thyroid, and Dads Celiac disease nothing will be done to proactively support this Child’s immune system and the child will most likely eventually develop full blown Hashimoto’s perhaps at in her mid 20’s or 30’s.

This poorly managed autoimmune Thyroid disease will most likely lead to a host of hormone imbalances, and digestive problems, PCOS, endometriosis, this will lead to years of birth control pills to “Regulate the cycle”, and perhaps by her late 30 infertility – which she will get Clomid or some other kind of synthetic hormone cocktail to help her sick body become pregnant. by her 60’s and 70’s now she will be undergoing a hysterectomy or mastectomy because of breast or uterine cancer.
Why do I tell you all of this?

It is not to scare you. But any doctor who has not seen this theme play over and over and over in his practice has his or her head buried under 10 feet of sand. This happens every single day!

I work with patients all over the world and so it is not just happening here in the US, it is happening everywhere. And someone, needs to point you in a different direction.

So In closing this video there are a couple of points to remember.

1. Predictive antibody testing is a great screening tool in that it can detect autoantibodies.
2. Again these autoantibodies often appear before the onset of symptoms and deviations in lab values. If you You can learn more about this test I often run when working with challenging cases.
3. I hope you found this video helpful, I hope that you share it with your friends and loved one who might be experiencing the frustrations of autoimmune disease. I hope this test gives you hope in knowing that you don’t need to wait till your immune system damages your body.
4. There are things that you can do to offset the immune system there are triggers that we look for in our office when we work with patients who have autoimmune disease. And that will be the topic for our next video “Understanding the autoimmune triggers”- I’m Dr Hagmeyer- stay tuned.
5. REFERENCES
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