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I really think plasmablasts are irrelevant to any of this because they are a brief transient state. LLPC are not depleted much if at all by any of these regimens targeting CD19 or CD20. Short lived plasma cells in spleen deplete, but not because they express CD19 or CD20, simply because they are...

Doh, forgot to mention the ear seeds. I manage to say what I wanted to say but I don't know when it might be run. They have been talking to people who did LP for LC but didn't tell me what they said.

I discussed this this evening with Jo Cambridge, who did the first set of antibody profiles on this. Rituximab depletes plasmablasts very effectively simply because it kills any B cells that might be turning into plasmablasts and any plasmablasts already present will either die or transform into...

Yes, 'seronegative RA' is probably a mixture of people with small immune complex arthritis who don't happen to have their complexes involve rheumatoid factor or anti-CCP and people with psoriatic type T cell arthropathy without psoriasis and a whole lot of other smaller groups we don't...

I mentioned the strange beliefs of a professor in Liverpool in my BBC interview this evening. It will be interesting to see if they run that bit.

It is quite bizarre to listen to him: Oh these dreadful people with ideologies about little green men under the bed. Rigorous science, in the form of me peeping in the night, proves that they are little red women after all... And so on. I think he has lost it completely.

I wonder who is running this? 152 patients sounds like a serious controlled trial, presumably double blind. I suspect nothing much will be found in the way of effect but it will be interesting even if not.

That is of course if you can find a nurse who isn't chatting to another nurse about her boyfriend and can be bothered to help you.

I'll certainly try and work in the Ear Seeds.

In our original report Anti-Sm did not go down over 6 months with ritux so probably from long lived plasma cells?

I think it may be important to note that 'RA' simply means an inflammatory arthropathy of a pattern probably due to small immune complex activation of macrophages through CD16. In SLE the complexes may involve different antigens from stand alone RA so the response to treatments may not tell us...

@Sean_Liu When we first started using rituximab for RA we switched from one biologic to another if needed and overlapped if needed - mostly with etanercept. I am not sure in what sense rituximab cannot be given with another biologic. Your points are interesting. If DAS28 is rising that early...

The bottom line for me is that LP is unethical an probably illegal because it explicitly violates informed consent. The patients are not informed of what is known but of fairy stories. The wider issue of course is that this is going on in routine NHS and other healthcare clinics where patients...

Thanks Trish. It is the same lot of journalists. I am not even sure that anyone with Long Covid has tried LP but that seems to be the topic of interest. Nevertheless, reminding me of all th stuff we have processed is useful - and particularly the PR screenshots @yannlk !

I am going to the BBC tomorrow to be interviewed about the Lightning Process and Long Covid. They want to know if I have talked to anyone who has had the Lightning Process for Long Covid. I don't think I have yet but if anyone here has tried the Lightning Pro9cess for Long Covid I would be very...

No, doses are usually around 750mg total. 200mg/kg would be about 10grams which is more like the dosage for immunoablation with stem cell rescue, which nobody uses routinely although Ann Trainor tried it for lupus about twenty years ago.

I have a suspicion that most of the toxin problems with spices relate to colouring. At one time a highly carcinogenic red dye was found in one red spice - you don't need much for such things to cause cancer. I think maybe lead, mercury and arsenic are also used for colouring or whiteness...

I am sure that qualitative research, with a small qr, is important in all sorts of fields and what we used to call 'field studies'. I may be wrong but I still have a sneaking suspicion that the term Qualitative Research emerged as a defence against accusation of 'soft' studies in social...

If a drug has been tested in human clinical studies before, going straight to phase 2 makes sense and there is nothing to say you cannot. It also makes sense if you do not have any clear pharmacodynamic measures to look at in a phase 1. If you don't quite know how the drug is supposed to be...

No they only had two doses in fact, as IV pulses with fluids and meson. I am not saying that this is a statistically useful finding but the reality of supporting people who gradually become more and more incapacitated and then die from a complication of treatment is not easy. Another part of...