Spondylitis Association of America Forums General Discussion General Message Board for Ankylosing Spondylitis and Related Diseases Cachexia and AS

Is Cachexia a familiar outcome with AS?

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/315312

These forums are amazing treasure of information. use the search feature and you will see some discussion on it. Winston seems to know about it, so you can DM them. It's not something I was familiar with. 'Dr. Google' did have a reference to it when searching for the two terms. What can you share about Cachexia and AS?

I don't think it's a common outcome in AS. I believe it's a possible outcome with any chronic inflammatory disease. What little I know about it derives mostly from a conversation I had with an oncologist friend. (Cachexia is very common in cancer patients.) It was shortly after my AS diagnosis, and she warned me, because I was at that time and had always been, a very thin person, to pay attention to my diet and exercise and not allow myself to lose any weight or muscle mass. She left me with the impression that there's this threshold that, once crossed, is almost impossible for a person suffering from chronic disease to recover from. Note that she needn't have worried about me. Middle age combined with the pandemic have worked together to keep me well above any such threshold.

I have no idea what is going on with me and the doctors don't want to get involved.

As a doctor's told me a few weeks back, here they get paid by the government for every 15 minute appointment, so trying to help someone with a chronic illness isn't profitable especially if you have never treated anyone with that type of illness.

Preliminary evidence for cachexia in patients with well-established ankylosing spondylitis

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16603581/