Igor has wrote about a very interesting paper he found dated from 2020. Great find.
Unfortunately, a 2020 study published in the British Medical Journal’s Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer suggests that having more IgG4 antibodies — of ANY kind - enhances cancer progression.
I suggest you read Igor’s post first since I don’t want to bother repeating the basics about IgG and class switching
That sounds pretty alarming. The purpose of my post is to tell you why you should not be all that alarmed (not that mRNA vaccines are safe or might not be a very bad thing if you have cancer).
Now that you have read Igors post and know what IgG4 is let me summarize what the study found . Those with cancer had higher levels of “Total” IgG4 than healthy people, and this IgG4 came from not only from tolerance due to the persistent cancer (IgG that reacts to cancer antigen) but also non-cancer IgG4 (IgG that reacts to non-cancer antigens).
The IgG4 does not enable an effector function, meaning it does not direct other immune cells to kill the cancer cells. However, it does prevent IgG1 (the heavy IgG lifter) from doing its job of facilitating the cancer cells destruction. Thats bad, really bad especially because there is so much of IgG4
IgG 4 is the orange/green antibody and the solid blue antibody is IgG1. If there was no IgG4 the blue antibody latched onto the tumor cell can hook up with the immune cell triggering the destruction of the tumor cell. IgG4 prevents that
The study showed the “Total” IgG4 total (reactive to cancer + non cancer antigens) increased from 3 to 11% when compared to a healthy non-cancer cohort. Thats an increase of 266%. Wow!
https://jitc.bmj.com/content/8/2/e000661
Igor then goes on to ask
Do IgG4 antibodies cause worse cancer outcomes, or do worse cancers create more IgG4? What is the horse, and what is the cart here?
The rest of the scientific study tries to answer this question, and scientists conclude that IgG4 drives malignancy and aggressiveness of the real-life cancers they observed.
They didn’t really answer this. But antibodies are created after the introduction of the antigen AND an immune response. IgG4 that is reactive to cancer would not exist before there was cancer. OTOH, once cancer was present and the immune system went into action, any non-cancer IgG4 could interfere with the function of the Cancer specific IgG1 . This would allow cancer to progress more ralidly
We all have some IgG4. The normal Total IgG4 is 3-6% of the Total IgG4 (all classes, IgG1-4)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327
In patients with the so called Turbo Cancers , the amount of IgG4 was up to 11% of Total IgG4 . How much of that was due to the cancer specific IgG4 and how much was due to non-Cancer IgG4. They don’t say.
Cancer takes quite a long time to grow big enough to cause symptoms. I researched this due to my own kidney cancer. I was diagnosed in 2019 with no concerning symptoms until I started pissing blood and blood clots that caused the most incredible pain I could imagine. This sucker was 6 cm and probably took 5-10 years to get to that size .
Results: The growth rates of primary and metastatic lesions of RCC varied. They ranged from 0.10 to 1.35 cm/year for primary lesions
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1442-2042.2001.00353.x?sid=nlm%3Apubmed
As my cancer was considered aggressive according to the pathology report, its probably closer to 5-8 years.
Coincidentally or not, at about that time I began losing weight which I attributed to working out more, or was I working out more because I was losing weight?.
Of course, maybe if I had lots of IgG4 before I got cancer it may have progressed faster. I have no idea what my IgG4 levels were.
In any event, once cancer takes hold it is persistent and eventually your immune system grows tolerant, also known as immune exhaustion. Cancer cells are tricky and develop many defenses. I wont bore you with the details but many forms of cancer immunotherapy have been shown to be effective in combatting these immune defenses, at least in some people.
One of them interestingly enough is a PD-1 inhibitor, which is actually an IgG4 antibody. If you have lots of PD-1 expression on tumor-specific T cells it works great at stopping Tumor cells PDL-1 from putting these T-Cells to sleep . The cancer then shrinks, albeit with some side effects due to a turbo charged immune system causing autoimmune disease.
If your T-Cells don’t have much PD-1 expression to lock on to , the IgG4 PD-1 inhibitor will be free to interfere with your IgG1 antibodies and your cancer grows faster .
This is one of the drugs I was contemplating taking for my cancer if the nephrectomy wasn’t enough. Pretty expensive though, over $100k per year and Taiwan government insurance wouldn’t cover it then. Fortunately I haven’t needed it and now I don’t think I would want it even if I did.
So lets get back to mRNA IgG4.
We have evidence mRNA vaccination increased spike antigen IgG 4 but unlike cancer, which seems to also increase non-cancer IgG4 antigens, we have no evidence mRNA increases other non-COVID Spike antigen IgG4.
In a recent study IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose, on average, from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% late after the third vaccination.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.ade2798
That sounds alarming, but how much does that 19.27% IgG4 that is COVID -Spike IgG4 specific affect your Total IgG4? To put this into context we need to do some digging
Now in the cancer study they mentioned Total IgG was 11%. Thats all IgG, for every antigen. So How much Total IgG is there in a non-cancer patient?
Total IgG4, the less prevalent subclass, is found in serum at mean values of 0.35–0.51 mg/mL , while the levels of IgG1, the most prevalent subclass, fluctuate between 5 and 12 mg/mL
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10222767/
Another source, Normal Ranges Total IgG Adult: IgG 6.0 - 16.0 mg/mL.
So lets be semi-conservative and go with the IgG 6mg/ml (all classes 1-4)
How about COVID - Spike specific IgG?
After 2 doses, 0.02-0.03 mg/ml mean COVID IgG ( all classes 1-4)
https://academic.oup.com/jid/article/224/5/793/6297423
OK, so COVID IgG after 2 doses accounts for less than 1% of your serums Total IgG (0.33% to be precise)
But there is a problem, we are interested in antibody levels after boosting. Unfortunately I cant find any data reported in wt/volume. Just BAU/ml and IU/ml and there are no wt/volume conversions that I can find.
I did find this.
The median antibody titer after the third vaccination was 18,300 U/mL, more than 10 times the median antibody titer after the second dose of vaccine, of 1185 U/mL.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10142734/
So lets just multiple the above by 10 x
and that gives us 0.2-0.3 mg/ml COVID IgG and 3.3% of Total IgG. Thats a ballpark estimate without more accurate data.
So if the normal person has 6 mg/ml Total IgG and 3-6% is IgG4, they have 0.18-0.36 mg/ml IgG4. If they have Turbo Cancer they have 0.66 mg/ml (11% of 6 mg/ml) which is 0.3-0.48 mg/ml above normal
Even if Covid specific IgG4 increases 20 %, its only going to increase your IgG 4 by 0.04 -0.06 mg/ml, and raises the Total IgG4 percentage up to 3.6- 6.6%
Thats only a 9-20% increase at most (0.04/0.48 x 100-0.06/0.3 x 100). Remember, we used a conservative low number for Total IgG. Thats a far cry from the 266% increase seen in Turbo - cancer patients
Is such an increase significant? No idea.
Maybe if mRNA vaccines can increase IgG4 of non-Covid specific antigens like Cancer does I would be more alarmed, but I have seen no such evidence.
Plus, last I checked only 7% of the population has taken the current booster, so IgG4 should be waning, although I don’t know if this is true for those who already have Turbo-cancer
Thats all I got to say about that.
One more point. Igor also says
“The “persistent irritation” effect possibly occurs not only because of repeat injectionsbut also due to mRNA gene expression never stopping in half of the vaccinated people.”
I keep seeng this claim from others as well but nobody has demonstrated or reported how long mRNA translates proteins,. A number of studies have shown the persistence of mRNA and spike protein for months but that does not prove continued expression, nor does it prove the expression is forever
I am not saying mRNA expression does not persist months or years but I have yet to see a study that actually demonstrates this , they only assert or assume it does to explain the persistence of spike or mRNA
Not all mRNA escapes the endosome which may be one explanation for persistence