Immunologically speaking

ok, some updates here. two weeks ago we all drove up to seattle very very early one morning (5 am!) and had some blood drawn from isaac and infected him with a virus that is harmless to humans. they performed two tests on the drawn blood. the first test was to count isaac's white blood cells. they counted the various types of t cells. they counted the various proteins found on his t cells, like cd3, cd4, cd8, etc... i have no idea what all they are for or what they do. i know hiv folks pay attention to their cd4 levels, but that's all i know. obviuosly all these proteins are quite essential. they counted his hematocrit level which was a little high. he was slightly neutropenic but not such that it seemed to raise a lot of flags. all his other counts were very normal.

the rest of the blood drawn was used for what they call a functional test. in a test tube or some such device they would introduce pathogens to the blood and see how the b and t cells would respond. and, i guess, it all was normal. so that's very encouraging. this seems to rule out SCIDs (Severe Combined Immunodeficiency Disorder), a very terrible immune disorder. it is what the original bubble boy had.

and as far as the infection of the virus goes, well, we've drawn blood last week and this week. we are going to be sending up the blood to dr ochs this week to see how isaac is responding. as a background -- we've infected him a bacteriophage, a virus that attacks a variant of E.Coli. it was administered into him by IV. there should be no e.coli in his blood anyway. so the virus will just float around and get absorbed into isaac's system at worst. at best, the antibodies in isaac will recognize the foreign body and attack it. the weekly blood draws will indicate an immune response, i.e. his body will generate the necessary antibodies to kill it. at least this is my highlevel understanding.

meanwhile, pulmonogocially, we are meeting with a surgeon tomorrow to find out what all's entailed with a lung biopsy.

i've got a link to a document revised last year about the various chronic interstitial lung diseases of infancy that you should check out written by a very prominant peds pulmonologist named Leland Fan.