High Autoantibodies and Hives. Please Help!

[lesarasota]

Hi Everyone, I'll try to make this as short as possible. I'm a 27 year old female. For my entire life I've been blessed with good health and no known illnesses, problems, or allergies. For the past six months I've been suffering from chronic hives. The first time I broke out into severe hives was July 2013. Prior to this, I've never had hives or been know to have any allergies. I saw the doctor a few times and the dermatologist. After trial and error with a few drugs, the only thing that would keep the hives down was prednisone. They attributed the outbreak to stress or me coming into contact to something that caused hives. The problem was, the day I would taper off the prednisone the hives would come back immediately, each time with more of a vengence. Finally, my doctor recommended me to an allergist. The allergist had me taper off the prednisone and put me on 100mg Allegra in the morning and 10mg Zyrtec at night. She tested me for every allergy. I came back to being allergic to nothing. We also did a blood tests for my thyroid, cancer, graves disease, and various other diseases. My thyroid levels came back normal but my  auto antibodies came back high, over 400. The allergist said that its something we'll just have to monitor, watch my levels, and do 'a step by step' with drugs. Right now she has me on Allegra in the morning, Montelukast Sodium 10mg in the afternoon, and Zyrtec at night. It seems to keep the hives at bay. Not unbearable, but not at all comfortable. When they become severe I go in for a shot of steroid, of course each time this requires a semi expensive co-pay for a specialist visit. At this point, I almost feel like I'm throwing money in a pit and watching it burn. I miss the healthy me that use to love being with family, making plans with friends, and exercising...all of this is becoming depressing.  Has anyone else out there dealt with something similar? Should I see someone else for a second opinion on medication and treatment? Thank you for your time.

[SwanSong]

During a time when I was overmedicated, a doctor treated me with the wrong medicine for some skin condition. I broke out in this strange rash called an autoeczematization. It was an all over body rash consisting of small hives. Nothing helped the rash and intense itching.

[Barb135]

Which antibody was performed?  There are 2 antibody tests that will diagnose Hashimoto's - those are Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies (TPOab) and Thyroglobulin Antibodies (TGab).  Patients can have either one, or both, of these antibodies to be diagnosed with Hashimoto's.

The definitive test for Graves Disease is Thyroid Stimulating Immunoglobulin (TSI).

[gimel]

Your Free T3 and Free T4 levels are way too low in the range to relieve hypo symptoms for many hypothyroid people.  You should talk to your doctor about the need to start taking thyroid medication.  In preparation for that discussion, I heartily recommend reading this link, that was written by a good thyroid doctor.   If you have any doubts about anything you read in the link, I can provide multiple scientific references to support all that is stated.  

http://www.hormonerestoration.com/Thyroid.html

With that knowledge in hand I suggest that you should talk to your doctor about starting on thyroid medication and also ask if he is willing to treat clinically, by testing and adjusting Free T3 and Free T4 as necessary to relieve symptoms.  Symptom relief should be all important, not just test results, and especially not just TSH levels.  If the doctor is unwilling to treat clinically, as described, then you will need to find a good thyroid doctor that will do so.

Two other suggestions for you to consider would be that Hashi's patients with rashes have found that taking selenium (within daily dosage) has been shown to dampen the effect of the Hashi's antibodies that seem to cause the rash.  If you want to read more about this you can search the Forum for Hashi's rash and you will find lots of posts.  The other suggestion is that since hypo patients often find they are also too low in the ranges for Vitamin D, B12 and ferritin, I highly recommend testing for those as well.

[lesarasota]

Free T3:  230. - 420.
Free T4:  0.89 - 1.76

[gimel]

Since thyroid test results and the calculated ranges vary from lab to lab, it is always necessary to compare results to ranges from the same lab.  Please post the ranges for the Free T3 and Free T4.

[lesarasota]

Below are my levels, I was incorrect on the AB its 300.

TSH: 1.085
T4 FREE: 1.08
T3 FREE: 297.71

Thyroid Peroxidase (tpo) AB: 303
Thyroglobulin, Antibodies: <1.0

[gimel]

Just because thyroid hormone levels are within the so-called "normal' ranges does not men that is adequate for you.  Due to the erroneous method for establishing ranges, functional ranges are more like half of the current ranges.  Many of our members, myself included say that hypo symptom relief required Free T3 in the upper third of its range and Free T4 around the middle of its range.  If you will please post your thyroid related test results and their reference ranges shown on the lab report, members will be glad to assess the adequacy of your testing and treatment.

[Red_Star]

"In conditions of chronic urticaria, thyroid antibodies are not only indicators of chronic inflammation, but they appear to play a role in the disease process. In most cases, improvement of urticaria with thyroxine replacement hormone suggests that chronic thyroid inflammation may initiate a hypersensitivity reaction and an underlying thyroid hormone deficiency.

However, rarely, patients with chronic urticaria have undiagnosed conditions of Graves' disease. Researchers in the UK have reported two instances in which patients with chronic urticaria and TPO antibodies responded well to the anti-thyroid drug carbimazole."

Excerpt from: Thyroid Peroxidase Antibodies - TPO Autoantibodies and Their Significance by Elaine Moore.