I was born severely premature (almost 3 months early).
And I’m wondering if anyone knows if there is any connection between premature birth and subsequent diagnosis of autoimmune diseases.
I know I’ve suggested before that I refuse to look back on earlier parts of my life and question them.
However, until this point in my life, I’ve been relatively lucky health wise for a severely premature baby born in 1985.
So I find myself having to wonder if there is any correlation between my premature birth and my recent diagnosis with multiple connective tissue/autoimmune diseases.
I’m not sure what I’ll do with information about this, but as I’ve suggested before, I’m trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together and make some sense out of all this for myself.
4 comments:
I was just researching this topic and found your blog. I am currently on the Marshall Protocol due to an "autoimmune" disease. The theory behind the MP is that bacterial load--from pre-birth, including from both parents but primarily the mother, to what you accumulate in your life time--determine what chronic illness you will develop. And by bacterial load what is of most concern is cell wall deficient bacteria, which hide in the macrophages and hijack the immune system.
At any rate, recent research indicates that the amniotic fluid of pregnant mothers of premies has a higher bacterial load. Two friends of mine growing up ended up having Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and one died of cancer (people with CFS have higher than normal cancer rates); I also have CFS. All three of us were the first children conceived by our mothers not long after they received a series of vaccines to be able to come to the U.S. as WWII brides. Vaccines are likely carriers of all sorts of bacteria and when they became pregnant, their immune systems had probably not had the opportunity to kill off all the invaders.
I was a premie, and I have the tiny finger nails and toe nails to prove it. I never asked it of my friend who died of cancer, but I remember her nails being small too. As for the other friend, I will have to wait until I am well enough to see her to check that out.
From there, we grew up together, and so we shared a lot of the same exposures. I take that to be the reason we ended up with the same immune disease.
So I've been trying to find out if there are any long term studies showing a correlation b/w premies and autoimmune diseases. The studies I've seen so far follow babies into their teen years mainly. I'm still looking... have a lot of brain fog and so I'm not very good at researching on the Net.
Best to you.
I did find this study: http://www.bio-medicine.org/medicine-news/Premature-Babies-Can-Lead-Normal-Lives-7670-1/
"However in a sub-analysis, a larger proportion of extremely low birth weight participants, 26%, were not employed due to chronic illness or permanent disability compared to normal birth weight subjects (15%)."
That's nearly twice the risk.
I was born in 1957, 2 months premature,I weighed 4lbs. something and went down to 3lbs. something. I have had terrible allergies my whole life and developed RA when I was 40. I have always wondered about a connection considering they are both an over reaction of your immune system. There is only 1 other person in my family that has RA and he also was a premie and had serious health issues at birth. I think there are many studies under way to sort these questions out. I am treated monthly with an infusion of Actemra that is a huge benefit to me,but also has undesirable potentially serious side effects. Medicine is about to change forever with the new stem cell treatments being studied and in many countries being used for an unlimited number of illnesses with wonderful success. I hope there will be treatments more easily available to persons with autoimmune diseases here in the US. You can get treated here for RA with adipose ( stem cells from your own fat) but last I checked it would cost over 12 thousand dollars a treatment and sometimes it takes more than 1. I feel hope is on the horizon, but I wish they would hurry up.
Wow, your story seriously is so close to mine. I also was 3 months early (just about), and have wondered if it was linked to autoimmune issues. thanks for sharing!
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