Getting patients well, keeping them well, and focusing on a cure

1. Eight or more new ear infections within one year.
2. Two or more serious sinus infections within one year.
3. Two or more months on antibiotics with little effect.
4. Two or more pneumonias within one year.
5. Failure of an infant to gain weight or grow normally.
6. Recurrent, deep skin or organ abscesses.
7. Persistent thrush in mouth or elsewhere on skin, after age one.
8. Need for intravenous antibiotics to clear infections.
9. Two or more deep-seated infections such as meningitis, osteomyelitis, cellulitis, or sepsis.
10. A family history of primary immune deficiency.

The above information is from the Jeffrey Modell Foundation.

Patients with CGD are prone toward pneumonia, enlarged lymph nodes, colitis, anemia, abscesses, granulomas of the stomach, esophagus, or urinary track, and osteomyelitis to name a few. Most CGD patients are seen by an immunologist.

CGD is one of the over 100 primary immune deficiencies. Unlike many PID, CGD patients have the ability to fight viral, but not bacterial or fungal infections. The cell can engulf the germ but the cell lacks the oxygen burst to kill the germ.

CGD is diagnosed by a simple, inexpensive blood test called the nitroblue tetrazolium test (NBT). Another diagnostic test uses dihydrorhodamine (DHR). This method is more accurate than the NBT test.

If there are terms such as “granulomatous” “calcified granulomata” “old granulomata” “hilar calcification” “residuals of previous granulomatous disease” on an x-ray report, it suggests that there was an infection, probably many years before, by a bacteria or fungus that tends to form granulomas, which are a particular kind of inflammatory reaction. This could have been pneumonia, etc. This does not mean that there is currently an active infection. This is also not the disease CGD. Many people confuse the two terms.

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