CLINICIAN TESTIMONIALS
“The Cunningham Panel™ becomes crucial in my workup of these patients to find out how much of an autoimmune process I’ve got going on.”
Dr. Gary Kaplan’s Testimonial
I use the Cunningham Panel™ to get a few different pieces of information. 1) The CaMKinase II gives us an indication that there is an ongoing infection that we have to address and 2) What antibodies are, in fact, activated?
Dr. Gary Kaplan, DO:
If we are thinking of autoimmunity as a potential problem, the question is first off: How did it get there? So, we now have this concept of autoimmune encephalopathy of an infectious etiology. This is where infections actually turn on the immune system, the acquired portion of the immune system specifically, and it goes rogue.
So, if you think the problem is the bug, then you have to go treat the bug. First and foremost, you have to go after the underlying infections. With strep infections, such as in PANDAS, but in Lyme disease we also know that it can do this and with Bartonella and Borrelia are capable of turning on the acquired immune system.
And we know it’s capable of turning it on in such a way that it then starts to attack itself – autoimmunity then occurs.
So, in order to effectively treat these patients, we have to treat not just the bug but we have to treat the immune system itself.
And so the Cunningham Panel becomes crucial in my workup of these patients to find out how much of an autoimmune process I’ve got going.
Because if all I have going is bugs, it makes my life much easier. Go kill bugs, viruses etc. But if the problem is autoimmunity then I know that I’ve got to address the underlying infection (whether they’re viral or bacterial) but also in addressing the autoimmune process, as well.
You can check the ANA. But the ANA in these patients is frequently normal. There’s a whole Mayo Clinic Panel that we can check.
The problem is, there are so many receptors [in the brain] that we’re [not able] to check all of them. The nice thing about the Cunningham Panel is that it has identified those receptors, specifically in the PANS and PANDAS population.
And so we use [the Cunningham Panel] to get a few different pieces of information. 1) The CaMKinase II giving us an indication that there is an ongoing infection that we have to address. 2) What antibodies are, in fact, activated?