Heat Shock Protein and CLL

[nuji]

Hello!

Based on research on HSP, is it advisable that people with CLL should avoid Sauna and heat?

researchgate.net/publicatio...

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Reading the paper, a lot more research needs to be done to determine who with elevated heat shock proteins will do well on steroid treatment. With regard to concerns about heat exposure, I don't know if heat increases these protein levels. You could check for changes in your lymphocyte count after a month of sauna use vs a month without it, but you would have to repeat them for a few times to be sure of an association.

Neil

[SeymourB]

nuji -

Despite the name including the word "heat", I think it's oversimplifying to jump from the name "heat shock protein" to "sauna" or "heat" themselves. Even though HSPs were discovered while investigating heat stress, later research found other HSPs based on genetic similarity alone, and the action of the HSPs happens even without the stress sometimes.

HSPs were discovered first in bacteria, I found:

hsp70.com/history/

"... other stress conditions, including heavy metals, hypoxia, nutrient deprivation and irradiation as well as oxidative and toxic stress, infections and exposure to inflammatory cytokines are also able to induce HSP expression."

As the researchgate article notes, there are many different heat shock proteins, and different ones upregulate while others suppress certain molecular reactions. Even if individual HSP's are connected intimately to CLL progression, the article makes no comment or inference on the action of heat itself on the human to that upregulation. There is no measure therein of specific temperatures or sources of heat - external vs fever, for example. Duration is not mentioned. They are simply looking at local biochemical factors.

I'm sure there are advocates for saunas for health, but is their often anecdotal "proof" something that can be generalized and then applied to biochemistry or vice versa?

I'm sure there are separate studies by the sauna industry showing health advantages from saunas via specific HSPs. But the same sauna could also reduce other HSPs in the body, and changes in circulation or hydration have their own effects that confound measurement of HSPs. One might also ask whether the HSP effect via sauna are assisted or countered by HSPs due to fever or chemical stress.

Another area of HSP research is in heat for injuries. How different is heating a single joint or limb from heating the whole body? Do HSPs increase in the joint or limb and decrease elsewhere, or does local application affect the entire body to some degree?

So I think there would have to be a carefully controlled study to weed through the complex metabolic reactions and their effect on HSPs and then on CLL. For questions regarding saunas, someone might look at Scandinavian CLL patients to see differences based on habit. Logged duration and frequency visits to the sauna with monitored temperatures would help also.

Since the genetic pool of Scandinavians is historically more limited, we might also look at doing a GWAS (Genome Wide Association Study) to make sure the results we find from a sauna study apply to people from elsewhere. We would want to note ethnic Scandinavians vs. more recent immigrants from the last century or two.

Conversely, there are people who claim health benefits from ice swimming or bathing. For our sauna study, we should also ask if the patient also does ice bathing, as it could confound the results. Those affected who do both, and suffer some measurable difference in progression of disease should be compared to those who do neither. Again, sessions would need to be carefully logged for duration and temperature. Age, gender, and comorbidities, especially those affecting circulation, should be noted.

There might even be existing studies related to this. I just did a quick search on PubMed for chronic lymphocytic leukemia AND heat shock protein (without quotes), and got 70 hits:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?te...

Putting quotes around the phrases reduces the number of hits to 34:

"chronic lymphocytic leukemia" AND "heat shock protein"

No hits at all for "chronic lymphocytic leukemia" AND "heat stress" or "chronic lymphocytic leukemia" AND "heat intolerance"

But PubMed is my favorite fishing hole. Fish that do not exist there could be found elsewhere.

Happy fishing!

=seymour=

[nuji in reply to SeymourB]

Thanx Seymore for taking the effort to do some research and replying so lucidly and elaborately

[Splash24]

Thanks for posting, interestingly enough, I have been thinking about investing in a sauna, but have hesitated as to a potential "double edged sword", studies have come recently with regards to sauna & HSP.

[SeymourB in reply to Splash24]

Splash24 -

Can you links to those studies for us?

=seymour=