Guest guest Posted July 20, 2008 Report Share Posted July 20, 2008 Hi, Lou, <<<<It came back at 640, I believe. But then we repeated the test, and the second one came back negative, which is a bit confusing. My doctor had said that the first one was so high that he didn't think it could be a false positive, so is the second a false negative? Who knows.>>>> I have also had positive ANAs come and go, Mine were done twice each time and at the same lab, so possibilities of either false positives or false negatives are remote. It just happens. There are different types of positive ANAs, like heavy nucleolar sstaining, or chromosome staining. Mine (and I think most CFSers) come out " diffuse " meaning nothing in particular stains. There were reports over 10 years ago of anti-nuclear pore activity being found in CFSers. If this is what is showing up, that explains the diffuse staining. There may be variations in the amount of autoantibody found, leading to sometimes ositive/sometimes negative results. Whether this could eventually lead to a treatment is unknown; if it does it will be many years in the future. (Tere could also be differences in the reagents being used to run the test - i.e. sometimes the fixed nuclei are stripped of nuclear pores and sometimes not.) Other than keep checking the ANA levels, there really isn't anything that can be done. If you want to, you could try the things that lupus (SLE) patients find helpful with your ANA goes up - many of them overlap what is recomended for CFS, while others may or may not be useful. Whatever works for you, use it. Jerry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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