Immunoglobulin A

Question

Dear ladies and gentlemen,
is there call for action in case of CF patients if the immunoglobulin A value is too high or too low?

Many greetings and thank you

Answer

Hello,
you ask if there is a call for action in case of an increased or decreased serum-IgA-level of a CF patient.
Increased serum-IgA-levels can occur in the frame of chronic bowel infections and combined with other rare diseases.
In case the serum-IgA-level of a Cf patient is clearly increased for a long time, a specialist for immune diseases should be contacted, in order to find the reason for the IgA-increase.
A lack of serum-IgA is a very frequent clinical picture. The frequency for the occurence of this disease is in our population about 1:160. It is therefore not extremely seldom, that a CF patient has at the same time a lack of IgA. Affected persons suffer increasingly from slight infections of the bowel and/or the airways. A specific treatment of the lack of IgA does not exist. The intravenous administiration of IgA containing serum probes led to severe allergic shock reactions of the patients and it therefore obsolete.
In patients with a lack of IgA, several chronic diseases are found more often: food allergies, celiac disease, asthma etc. In case of a CF patient with lack of IgA, whose routine therapy shows unsatisfying therapeutical results, it should be taken into consideration, if one of the above mentioned accompanying diseases comes into question.
Yours sincererly,
Dr. H.-G. Posselt

01.08.2011