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Scientists: Protein IL-17 fights infection, acts on the brain, inducing anxiety

(medicalxpress.com)
112 points wglb | 1 comments | 14 Apr 25 15:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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eveningsteps ◴[14 Apr 25 18:12 UTC] No.43684375[source]▶
Surprisingly enough, this partially exposes the link between depression and some of the autoimmunal diseases. One example is how patients with psoriasis have significantly elevated levels of proteins from the IL-17 family (namely, IL-17A, IL-17C, and IL-17F) - up to 4 to 8 times above nominal values.

At the same time, bimekizumab, one of the bleeding-edge psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis treatments, suppresses production of IL-17A and IL-17F (methotrexate does that, too, albeit to a much smaller degree). As a result, people receiving IL-17 suppressors become happier over the course of years, and not only due to months-long remission - I had a chance to see this in one of the experimental treatment programs.

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hirvi74 ◴[14 Apr 25 22:54 UTC] No.43687182[source]▶
Based on your knowledge and experiences, do you think the benefits are worth the potential side-effects?

I fully understand that after a certain point of disease severity, the right choices tend to become more apparent. However, I have been offered such medications in the past, but I have always refused.

From what I understand, many of the serious side-effects are rare. However, once Pandora is out of the box, it's not always easy to get her back inside.

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1. spondylosaurus ◴[15 Apr 25 01:33 UTC] No.43688150[source]▶
If you have the kind of autoimmune issue severe enough that people are offering you biologics, the answer to "is it worth the risk?" is almost always yes, imo.

Unchecked inflammation is guaranteed to wreck your health, whereas treatments for that inflammation only have a slim chance of major side effects. For cancer risks specifically, it's worth considering that (1) you have a fighting chance to beat cancer, whereas an autoimmune condition can cause permanent and unfixable damage, and (2) autoimmune diseases are themselves associated with cancer risk. So for something like colitis, which is associated with bowel cancer, your overall odds of getting cancer are exponentially lower with treatment than without. (And less serious side effects usually go away when you stop the medication :P)

It's also worth noting that newer biologics are more like a sniper than a shotgun, so the immunosuppression is pretty targeted; still worth being careful, but it's not like the vulnerability that comes with, say, chemotherapy.