The Anonymous Widower

Why A Lucky Few May Help The Rest Of Us Beat Disease

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.

This is the sub-title.

A British biotech firm believes patients who defy odds could hold the key in their blood.

These three paragraphs introduce the article.

Patient 82 should be dead. At the age of 63 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In most cases, he would not have lasted a year. But seven years on, patient 82 is alive. Not merely alive — thriving.

He enjoys gardening. He likes seeing his grandchildren. He enjoys life.

How? The answer, a British biotech company believes, could lie in his blood. Now, with the help of dozens of other anonymous patients, all of whom have defied their cancer prognoses, they hope to find it.

Note, that the company is Alchemab Therapeutics.

The article got me thinking about myself.

I belong to a group of people, who are twenty-five percent less likely to suffer from cancer according to peer-reviewed research at Nottingham University.

I am coeliac and adhere to a strict gluten-free diet.

There may be other benefits too!

I have not had a serious dose of the covids, although I may have had a very mild case at the beginning of 2020 after I shared a train with a large number of exuberant Chinese students, who had recently arrived at Manchester Airport and were going to their new University across the Pennines.

I have also since found at least another seventy coeliacs, who have avoided serious doses of the covids.

Research From The University Of Padua

This paper on the US National Library of Medicine, which is from the University of Padua in Italy.

The University followed a group of 138 patients with coeliac disease, who had been on a gluten-free diet for at least six years, through the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic in Padua.

This sentence, sums up the study.

In this analysis we report a real life “snapshot” of a cohort of CeD patients during the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Italy, all followed in one tertiary centre in a red area of Northern Italy. Our data show, in accordance with Emmi et al., the absolute absence of COVID-19 diagnosis in our population, although 18 subjects experienced flu-like symptoms with only one having undergone naso-pharyngeal swab.

It says that no test subject caught Covid-19, in an admittedly smallish number of patients.

But it reinforces my call for more research into whether if you are a diagnosed coeliac on a long-term gluten-free diet, you have an immune system, that gives you a degree of protection from the Covids.

The Times article mentions the immune system.

I believe my immune system to be strong after the reaction I had to the Astra Zeneca vaccine. I didn’t feel well to say the least after my Astra Zeneca vaccine and my GP and other doctors felt that it could be due to my immune system, thinking that the chimpanzee virus-based vaccine was a danger and attacking it.

Significantly, I had no reaction to the second dose. So had my immune system recognised the vaccine as a friend not a foe?

My son, who my late wife was sure was an undiagnosed coeliac, died of pancreatic cancer at just 37.

How did my late wife know? Don’t question her intuition and also she felt that my son and myself felt the same to her touch.

It should be noted that my son’s daughter was born with a Congenital hernia of the Diaphragm. Congenital defects can happen to people, who have a coeliac father.

At the age of 20, my granddaughter is fine now, after heroic surgery at the Royal London Hospital, at just a few days old.

December 27, 2022 Posted by AnonW | Health | AstraZeneca, Cancer, Coeliac, COVID-19, COVID-19 Vaccine, Genetics, Immune System, My Family, My Son George, Nottingham University, Padua University, Pancreatic Cancer | Leave a comment