Thanks you so much doctor. I will speak to my doctors about this in the upcoming week. I so appreciate your help. Have a great weekend.
Hi!
If you are being given chemotherapy to reduce the proteins, then either there were malignant or cancer cells found in the spinal tap or an auto-immune disease is suspected. If latter is the case then your ANA must be high and this would need to be further investigated. Maybe you have other autoimmune diseases along with Sjogrens Syndrome with chronic neuropathy. The proteins will come down once the inflammation subsides. You may need a change of drugs for this. If former is the case then the proteins will settle down once the tumor subsides.
Also, whether you have Sjogren’s syndrome (SS) or not needs to be confirmed. To confirm, you need to undergo two main tests: anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) and rheumatoid factor, the latter because it is possible to get SS secondary to rheumatoid arthritis. Typical ANA patterns in SS are positive SSA/Ro and SSB/La. SSB/La is more specific for SS while SSA/Ro can be present in numerous other autoimmune conditions. Apart from these tests, Schirmer's test to measure the production of tears, and a slit-lamp examination to look for eye dryness should be done by an eye specialist.
Do discuss this with your doctor. Take care!