Some more notes on Transfer Factor, adapted from a post to CFSMExperimental Mail List

These notes were addressing the confusion which afflicts everyone who tries to understand what oral TF is available, and where.

I think that part of the confusion comes from the fact that Animune (TF560) have a patent on their method of getting the HHV6 specific TF out of colostrum.  But don't forget that there are a number of different sources of TF, and cow colostrum is only one of these.  No-one has a monopoly on "good" TF necessarily - it all depends on how scrupulous and honest they are as to what you end up getting in your capsules, and how effective it is.

Colostrum is not TF.  Colostrum is just one place where you can find TF because colostrum is used to pass immune information from mother to baby in mammals, via ...ta da... Transfer Factor.

The "original" source of TF for therapeutic use was from human blood, usually injected.  This is still available with difficulty, and I include a link on the main TF page to a manufacturer of such.  I have used this stuff a decade ago and it was hugely effective, and the effect lasted for a long time.

Much oral TF is made by extraction from cow colostrum.  But a lot is also made by extraction from white blood cells. I believe there is also some kind of cell line process in which animal cells are cultured to produce, eventually, something containing TF, but even if this is true I don't understand it.  The Italian product (which seems to be off the US market now, or maybe not available to anywhere outside Italy?) was made this way I think. Chisolm's is made from the white blood cells of chickens.  ImunomedicA make theirs from pig blood. This is a totally different process from colostrum extraction.  Fudenberg pioneered the use of white blood cells extracted from the blood of a close relative or housemate. The only other people who did produce commercial TF were Pizza and his merry men in Italy and/or France. I think they used the cell line process but I may be wrong on this, and I have not been able to find it on the market for some time. (It used to be marketed under the name Transfactor which I see has since been adopted by Neways as the name of a colostrum based product - this is NOT TF).

The Chisolm product is considerably more expensive than TF560 or 540, but is claimed to be specific against a whole range of organisms in addition to HHV6, including (taken from Chisolm site)...

Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV), Cytomegalovirus (CMV), Chlamydia pneumoniae, Borrelia burgdorferi (cell-wall deficient Lyme), Human herpes virus 6 (HHV6), Babesia, and Ehrlichia.

Assuming this is true, then it may well be worth considering this product if you want to enhance your immune response to CMV or chlamydia or the Lyme bug.  I have no way of knowing whether this product is all it is claimed to be, but I have used it and found it definitely did two or three things:

• caused short term flu-like reaction at the beginning,
  
• saved me from getting any respiratory infection or cold or flu for the first half of this year, which is not true without TF, and
  
• maybe was partly responsible for my continued apparent general improvement

The whole business of TF is difficult to fathom and it is very hard to work out exactly what is available and what you can expect from each product.  It is made even harder by, or maybe because of, the fact that we still don't really know how TF works.

The Animune products have an apparent advantage in that they claim to actually assay the potency of their products which is no mean feat.  I suspect that Chisolm (and even more so, 4-life) are not perhaps doing this very rigorously.  But this doesn't mean they don't work, and it doesn't mean that even Animune know really how much specific TF  is in each capsule. Chisolm claim the advantage of including specific TF to a number of problematical pathogens within a single capsule.

The whole question of dosing is another area of mystery.  Most of the manufacturers recommend taking TF every day but it is difficult to see why this should be necessary.   I think enough is known about how it works to say that there is a medium or long term memory effect associated with the immune changes caused by TF.   I certainly noticed that the improvement from my first (human) TF lasted for over a year after the last injection, and the fact that the injections were given 3 times at monthly intervals means that the prof thought the effect was long lasting too.   I suspect that the daily dosage is only because the manufacturers would have difficulty selling 1 stronger capsule for $50 designed to last a month.  Or else I suppose it is possible that we may be unnecessarily overdosing.   It is impossible for any of us consumers to work out how "strong" any of the products are.  Again I suspect that the 4-life product is less potent than the Animune/Chisolm products, but this may be my bias showing. Animune claim to guarantee that theirs is more potent than any other oral TF's.

I took TF continuously one a day for a couple of months, and then I tried changing to 4 caps once a week, and can't see any difference in effect.  I have no difficulty believing that a week on and 3 weeks off could be perfectly adequate, but of course, make up your own mind after checking with your doctor. (This last phrase is for my butt protection, but it doesn't need to be said that your doctor is most unlikely to know what TF is, let alone how to use it!)

Another problem for anyone wanting to understand TF is that there is great deal of politics involved between those medicos and researchers who "believe" in TF and others who do not. Then there is another minor war between the manufacturers and the "authorities", and a whole other set of politics between some researchers and individual manufacturers. 

As an example here is a quote from http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/commoncause.html

The same was said by transfer factor pioneer, H. H. Fudenberg, MD during the early 80's when he was successfully treating both autism and ME/CFIDS until his laboratory was shut down by the government.

The following is a quote from a strange but kind of interesting site (now disappeared - Mar 2002) which touches on the possibility of a TF war...

There is exciting research going on on the subject of "antigen specific transfer factors." Click here to see eighty different scientific studies on this subject. It also happens that this type of transfer factor is a drug and cannot legally be sold except with FDA approval and through licensed doctors. Some unethical companies have tried to sell "antigen specific transfer factor." Click here to see some references to them, and to see the legal opinion letter that explains why this is illegal. You will find that some of these companies are already closed down, and any that are still operating probably will be closed down before long.

But I point out that the eighty studies referred to here are not actually about TF, rather they appear to have been accumulated by carrying out a badly phrased search on Medline. You can draw your own conclusions therefore about the accuracy of the remainder of the statement quoted above. As far as I know it is not true that Specific TF requires a doctor's approval i.e. prescription. My 'helpful' correction to the site owner elicited a rude response, so I don't know whether he will update his words.

Such politics might explain yet another weirdness in the TF story which is the difficulty in working out what is happening regarding the web-sites of the companies and other promoters.  It is very hard to make sense of the websites of the US oral TF manufacturers - impossible to work out who runs some of the sites and why there are a whole set of interconnected websites which seem to go to pains to hide their true identity.  And these sites (and details of what their products are) change so frequently that it is difficult to make sense of what is available at any time.

Which brings me to the last confusion, which is the usefulness of "generic" or "polyvalent" TF vs "specific" TF.  It seems there are two overlapping reasons for CFS sufferers taking TF...

• to initiate or repair the body's immune fight against some particular bugs like HHV6 when it seems the body has lost its ability to see or fight these bugs.  If you have a particular infection (or several infections), then to achieve this you would need TF specific to those infections. In this case the TF "educates" your body's own immune system to recognise the bugs and so to start combating them, when it could not do so before.  This is why people use TF560 and TF540 and Chisolm's various specific products.
  
  
• to generally move the immune system from an incompetent state to a more competent overall state, maybe from TH2 to Th1 i.e. to improve cell mediated immunity.  It seems that this happens with generic polyvalent TF as much as with specific so for this purpose there seems no reason to pay the extra for specific TF. 

Here is another quote from http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/commoncause.html

"Steven Bock M.D. ... puts patients on TF for 3 weeks and off for three weeks. Aside from a Herxheimer effect he sees no adverse side effects. He uses 4Life TF since an antigen-specific one is more expensive."

The transfer factor story is complex and interesting, and it seems there is a lot of confusion out there about TF. In conclusion, and maybe the most useful part, look at the links on the main TF page and do your own reading.