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- Path: sparky!uunet!charon.amdahl.com!pacbell.com!att-out!rutgers!rwja!soma.UMDNJ.EDU!byrne
- From: byrne@soma.UMDNJ.EDU (Bruce Byrne)
- Newsgroups: sci.med
- Subject: Re: T4 and T8 counts
- Message-ID: <k?o.721503217@soma.UMDNJ.EDU>
- Date: 11 Nov 92 17:33:37 GMT
- References: <1992Nov5.191846.11352@kestrel.edu>
- Sender: news@rwja.umdnj.edu
- Lines: 81
-
- king@reasoning.com (Dick King) writes:
-
-
- >The blood bank at which i donate regularly called a couple of weeks ago.
-
- >They said:
-
- > * we tested donors for T4 counts in 1984. Yours [mine] was in the 290's,
- > which is about half the bottom of the normal range. Your T4/T8 ratio was a
- > very low 0.45 [minimum normal is 0.85].
-
- [stuff deleted]
-
- > * You continue to donate, and your blood continues to come up clean and even
- > CMV negative [premature infant-worthy]
-
- > * could you give us another small sample?
-
- [more stuff deleted]
-
- >Apparently the NIH has asked them to retest all people who tested with low T4
- >counts in 1983 or 1984, but still donate regularly [3-4/yr in my case]. This
- >blood bank had a couple of hundred low T4 counts, 2% of which turned out to be
- >HIV+ and all but six of which have stopped donating at THIS PARTICULAR blood
- >bank since 1984.
-
- [more stuff deleted]
-
- >They say that there's nothing to worry about, and that there's no reason to
- >skip my next scheduled donation in a couple of weeks. I therefore am not
- >consulting with any doctor, but could any net.hematologists comment on all of
- >this?
-
- Would a net.molecular.biologist do?
-
- The story all adds up; I agree, there's nothing to worry about. You will
- recall the flurry of stories last summer about "AIDS" without "HIV." These
- were often (1) very sick folks who (2) had low CD4's and (3) had no
- immunologic or molecular markers of having been infected with HIV. Since
- both the molecular and immunologic tests for HIV require that the blood
- banks know what they're looking for, the (remote) possibility that there
- was a new infectious agent causing an AIDS-like syndrome needed to be
- investigated. The important finding (absolutely distinctive from the
- early days of AIDS before HIV was implicated) was that these sick
- folks fit into
- no consistent epidemilogic class.
-
- On the way in, this morning, I heard on the news that NIH (I believe) was
- undertaking a study to see if the "low CD4" condition could be transmitted
- by transfusion. Here's where you come in.
-
- Curiously, your blood bank was doing some expensive testing back in 1984,
- probably related to the AIDS epidemic. They kept records of exceptional
- results, and then pulled you out again. My guess is that they will trace
- your donations to those recipients who recieved the (usually fractionated)
- components of your blood and then examin their health
- status and, perhaps, do a CD4 analysis on them.
-
- My problem, in trying to understand the issue, is that there is not
- nearly enough information on CD4 results on asymptomatic individuals
- to know what a low CD4 count means. It could be trivial. I recall a
- report some time ago that described a population having a slightly
- diverse CD4 epitope that did not bind to commercial antibody and
- therefore these folks tested as low CD4. Other folks may just usually
- be low. But since the test is relatively expensive, it hasn't often
- been applied to healthy populations so that the medical consequence of
- low CD4 (if any) could be followed.
-
- The stress on the blood banking system to produce an unusually safe
- product (unreasonable, to my mind, but then that is my mind) has led to
- the study that apparently involves you. I'd hope that somebody might
- also look at the outcome for folks like you and give us some information
- about low CD4's in healthy individuals.
-
- >Perhaps it's an experiment to turn healthy folks into hypocondriacs ;-) ?
-
- You don't need an experiment to do this; just call a press conference.
-
- bcb
-
- >-d
-