Thursday 16 December 2021

1612/21 Omicron and light chains

Felt gradually better as yesterday went on and did jobs around the house for most of the morning. Didn't go out otherwise and consequently just missed my (large) activity target for the day.

Becoming increasingly concerned about the Omicron variant of COVID-19,despite being triple vaccinated and the appearance of two different drug treatments for the Clinically Extremely Vulnerable. As far as I can interpret the information I'm getting it is a lot less nasty then previous variants, and I think Boris is overplaying his hand in trying to get us to believe - on the basis of just one very ill-defined death - that it is just as dangerous in terms of hospitalisations and deaths as earlier forms of the plague.

Had a bit of a controversy on the Myeloma UK Support (facebook) group as to whether"free light chains" are the same thing as "serum free light chains" as far as blood test results are concerned. As far as I know they are. But one of the contributor said that her consultant had asked for both and that the phlebotomist who drew the blood  said they were different. If any of my blog readers know the difference I'd appreciate an explanatory comment!

2 comments:

  1. My hsuband'sspecialist answered the question Serum free light chain and free light chain are the same thing. Serum just means that the sample is taken from your blood (serum is the clear liquid in the blood). If you think of an immunoglobulin (the protein produced by plasma cells) is like a tree, then light chains are the branches. More trees - more branches. Some trees have lots of branches, and some don't. So, light chain level differs between patients.

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  2. Thanks - that confirms what I thought.Same thing.

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