Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
As a background. These are the slides 2 numbers with graphs & figures so you understand what the Norwegians imply with the NK-correlation
OK. The first slide seems to show an impressive relation between improvement and NK numbers. The suggestion is that daratumumab efficacy is mediated through NK cells and so maybe patients with low NK numbers do not kill enough plasma cells. So the NK number is related to the drug action rather than anything to do with the ME/CFS I think. On its own the slide makes quite a convincing for the clinical action of Dara being real but the numbers are small.
I would love Oystein to be proved right that cutting antibody is useful. I have an idea that might fit with that but the route back to the original serendipitous observation is getting quite tortuous.
I also think it is possible that low NK cell numbers and/or function reflect a compensatory rise in TGF beta, which may reflect more severe disease or a different disease. So the NK cells might be a real but epiphenomenal part of the biology.
They also seem to be showing that NK cells get clobbered a bit by Dara - which is maybe not surprising but probably irrelevant.