The National Institute of Health’s RFA for ME/CFS Collaborative Research Centers breaks new ground. For the first time, the funding agency is strongly encouraging researchers “to establish partnerships with patients groups and solicit their input” as part of their research plan. #MEAction assembled a team of volunteers to assist researchers in thinking about this, and
Researchers from Queensland’s Griffith University recently identified a dysfunctional cell receptor in the immune system of people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS).
Fifteen people meeting the Fukuda criteria for CFS were studied, against 25 controls. Considering the small size of the study, the results cannot be considered definitive.
If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, or know any others who do, please consider asking them to donate blood to the Stanford Genome Technology Center as a healthy control. The blood will be used for multiple purposes, including in Ron Davis‘s ME/CFS research. If you know individuals who are happy to help
A person with ME for more than 38 years wrote this pointed letter to the National Institute of Health, calling its leaders to act with urgency and correct their gross neglect of people suffering with ME.
Want to know more about the research centers and data center being planned for ME/CFS by the National Institute of Health (NIH)? Directors at the NIH discussed the research centers and answered questions from people with ME along with researchers in a phone call on Feb. 2. The NIH will provide $30 million over the
Patients in the Ampligen clinical trial are asking for community help to protest changes that will force many to stop getting this medicine. Please sign our petition urging Hemispherx to put ME patients first, always.
Government funding for research centers and a data management center for ME/CFS has been made public, and the amount of funding allocated is infuriatingly small. The National Institute of Health (NIH) plans to issue two Requests for Application (RFAs) in January to fund 2-3 collaborative research centers and a data management center for ME/CFS. The
Chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) have a long, long way to go before they get the attention and resources they deserve. It would take a heroic leap to quickly achieve what people with these diseases deserve and what the diseases themselves – given their economic costs / burdens they impose – should receive. So much needs to be done (funding, doctor education, drugs, other treatments) – and we’re coming from such a low place – that it seems almost impossible that it can be done in a reasonable amount of time. In fact, people do the impossible – make what seems at first to be inconceivable differences in one area or another – all the time. This blog is about a man who did that, and did so in a way that may directly help those with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia.
Thank you for this opportunity to address the CFS Advisory Committee. I am writing to in response to the call for comments regarding how the US government might engage members of the ME/CFS community, especially patients and their lay supporters, in addressing and solving the clinical, research, educational, and public health challenges of this condition.
Yesterday, Mary Dimmock, Arthur Mirin and Leonard Jason published a hallmark study in disease burden in myalgic encephalomyelitis. Why is funding so low? Funding for ME/CFS is arguably the lowest per patient for any major disease in the United States, averaging to about $5 per patient per year. Compare this to multiple sclerosis, an illness
