What caused your Wegeners?

[MCC]

Having only been recently diagnosed, I am still learning about Wegener's , but I have been told that no one really knows what causes it to start.

My doctor said I may have had something like a cold and my immune system for some reason went into overdrive.

I was wondering if you have theories/suspect something that brought your wegener's on?

[elephant]

I think about this everyday and too many variable, plus I was very young around 12 when I started with wg symptoms. Vaccines? bacteria? virus?

[Jack]

I like to think it is probably a very sensitive immune system triggered by an infection.
Just another half baked theory I know! I've never read anything claiming to know the true cause.

[MCC]

When I was in India at the end of 2008 my boyfriend and I both got a boil- he got it first and his got very badly infected. I was reluctant to go to a doctor so I diagnosed it myself as having been caused by staph and found what antibiotics I needed on the internet. Now I wonder if the staph (if that's what it was) or the antibiotics triggered the wegener's, although it was some time after I became ill.

I remember this incident particularly because I've never usually been an 'ill' person.

[Jack]

I've never usually been an 'ill' person.

That is what most people on here say. Hence my "sensitive immune system" theory.

[Sangye]

I was never an ill person before, either. I wouldn't go too far down the road with the boil worries, Mandy. The vast majority of boils are staph and are easily treated by antibiotics. If you had such an infection and the antibiotic didn't work, it would have worsened. From a holistic perspective, antibiotics are powerful drugs, but one round of them isn't enough to cause an immune system to go haywire.

In holistic medicine the cause for autoimmune diseases is prolonged stress to the immune system. Many of us had very strong immune systems and didn't even notice the stress (ie we didn't get sick often). Stress is due to emotional stress, pollutants, vaccines, food sensitivities, processed foods, drugs, nutrient deficiencies, etc....

[elephant]

It is so hard to pinpoint what caused the WG. I still think there is genetic component re: autoimmune disease's that run in families. Like Sangye stated above ( don't know how to copy and paste...shhh) stress, pollutants...ect...our immune system can't handle it.

[JanW]

I don't even remember being sick, but I do remember waking up one morning and realizing that I couldn't breathe so well. That's probably when the granulomas started forming on my subglottis (2005). That having been said, I would never have known if I hadn't gone to the doctor because of a sinus infection and he looked down my throat. The next bad thing that happened was a sudden onset of saddle nose (mine flattened in literally a week or less), but that didn't happen until this summer. I never noticed it was soft, it wasn't painful or anything. I have no other involvement so far -- just nose and throat.

[Luce]

I was told mine was caused by a throat infection which triggered off the WG, which apparently I was just pre-disposed to developing. What that's supposed to mean I don't know!

[jeriorleans]

A.J. got a bad cold right before he started having all of his problems. He also had recently had his immunizations. Has there been any studies on what could cause Wegeners? Prior drug use, smoking, alchololism of the parents? My ex-husband had a drug problem and it frequently crosses my mind that if he was on drugs while I got pregnant could it have caused these problems.