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HI Everyone, I wanted to share something that I believe has really helped my teenage son. During a flare he gets intrusive thoughts (and in a non-functioning fog), can't sleep, urinates frequently and has one tic. Out of a flare, he doesn't have these symptoms. We just finished IVIG about 8 weeks ago (and he had a 2 week flare in there). . Motrin and Tylenol (and to some extent the one time with did prednisone) don't seem to help during a flare ... I think those antibodies have reared their ugly heads and it takes 2-4 weeks to go down. However......good news and want to share it with you all However, we have always, always given fish oil but primarily an EPA heavy Nordic Natural fish oil. About 3-4 weeks ago, I switched to Nordic Naturals DHA heavy formulation based on this article (daily about 1.2 grams of DHA and .3 of EPA). I think there were a couple of times he was going to flare... and it felt like the DHA stopped the inflammation cold in its tracks!) Curious to hear if any of you had experience. I have a pandas doc who says that dha has been know to manage the inflammation in certain illnesses. Here is the article that initially got me thinking...it is basic, but I would say it has been a winner in our arsenal and wanted to share it with you all.... Of course this could be IVIG success to date (and who knows a big back regression may be forthcoming, but I am still thinking that DHA is a big find for us...Note it is the amount of DHA and that it is a higher ratio than EPA (3-1 vs. 1-3). Something about what it does with macrophages seems to strike a bell. I believe my son is more PANDAS vs. PANS. Thanks, Califamily Scientists show how DHA resolves inflammation Date: July 1, 2013 Source: Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Summary: Chronic inflammation is a major factor in problems from arthritis to cardiovascular disease, and DHA is known to help. New research in The FASEB Journal, explains why DHA is important in reducing inflammation, and provides an important lead to finding new drugs that will help bring people back to optimal health. Researchers found that macrophages use DHA to produce "maresins," which are the "switch" that turns inflammation off and switches on resolution. The FASEB Journal, helps explain why DHA is important in reducing inflammation, and provides an important lead to finding new drugs that will help bring people back to optimal health. Specifically, researchers found that macrophages (a type of white blood cell) use DHA to produce "maresins," which serve as the "switch" that turns inflammation off and switches on resolution. "We hope that the results from this study will enable investigators to test the relevance of the maresin pathway in human disease," said Charles N. Serhan, Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. "Moreover, we hope to better understand resolution biology and its potential pharmacology so that we can enhance our ability to control unwanted inflammation and improve the quality of life." To make this discovery, Serhan and colleagues deconstructed the biosynthetic pathway for maresin biosynthesis and found that human macrophages are responsible for converting DHA to the novel epoxide intermediate "13S, 14S-epoxy-maresin." Then, they learned how to synthesize the molecule and found that maresins caused macrophages to change their "type" so they no longer caused inflammation (switching them from M1 to M2 phenotypes). "We've known for a long time that DHA tames inflammation, now, we learn exactly how DHA works: via new substances called maresins," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of The FASEB Journal. "We encounter inflammation almost daily, but our body has ways of turning it off. This is an important step toward understanding exactly this happens. You're likely to be hearing a lot more about maresins if, or when, new therapies arise from this discovery."