Biomarkers are a holy grail for ME/CFS because they have the potential to help diagnose disease, track disease progression or progress and help inform which treatments might help. The need for biomarkers is immense and researchers will identify many possible ones. It is encouraging that there have been more possible biomarker reports recently. It can be so hard
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
If the Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) team is successful with its RFA application proposal, this funding would clearly help the institution to become a Collaborative Research Center, and would help to fund the analysis work involved in the Monster study – albeit slowly. If you’ve missed it, this study is not only about microbes and viruses; it was hugely expanded to include immunology, metabolomics, proteomics, genetics and epigentics.
The Solve ME/CFS Initiative (SMCI) hosted a webinar December 15 in which Zaher Nahle, PhD, MPA, summarized research in which they are participating or supporting. Nahle is the Vice President for Research and Scientific Programs at SMCI. Nahle began by listing the problems associated with ME’s perception, funding, and research. “The mother lode of our
One of the frequent complaints of patients, researchers, and policymakers about ME research is that the findings are scattered, and the studies, small. One group will discover X is elevated in 20 ME patients, only to find that when the test is done on another 13 patients two years down the line, they don’t show
From the Solve ME/CFS Initiative: We recently highlighted a paper published online on October 17, 2016 (doi: 10.1038/ng.3696) the journal Nature Genetics, one of the most rigorous publications in the field of genetics with tantalizing findings. The paper, titled “Elevated basal serum tryptase identifies a multisystem disorder associated with increased TPSAB1 copy number,” had two key features that could be potentially relevant to ME/CFS:
#MEAction recently interviewed Dr. Michael VanElzakker regarding two, new studies on ME/CFS. The first aims to discover evidence of increased activity where the sensory vagus nerve enters the brainstem – a subtle effect that requires some intricate scans. In order to measure the activity in the vagus nerve, Dr. VanElzakker will use a scanner that
SMCI recently launched a new partnership as a component of our targeted initiative program, within our Pathways and Biomarkers Discovery Track. The project consists of original research in the areas of bioenergetics, metabolomics, and lipidomics using high-throughput technology. Importantly, this new SMCI research project relies on blood from well-qualified patients from The Levine Clinic; it also builds on recent discoveries in gut microbiome from Dr. Maureen Hanson’s lab, which uses these same patients.
Press Release Toronto – August 28, 2016 – “This is ludicrous!” writes Dr. Ian Hyams about the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR) decision to deny funding for a networking grant for the neurological disease Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME). Dr. Hyams, Medical Director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Clinic, expressed further concern stating that “the
Robert Naviaux, at researcher at University of California, San Diego, published a landmark paper yesterday on the metabolites of patients with ME/CFS. It made news around the world. Below, an in-depth analysis of the paper’s findings and its implications. Note: some of the information below is speculative, linking Naviaux’s findings to other research. Findings not
