Recently, in July 2017, there has been an interesting development for Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) : a research team have done extensive screening to identify cytokines that have unusual values in CFS sufferers blood tests. Those cytokines tested, of course, are almost all pro-inflammatory cytokines. Here is the abstract of the paper, called "Cytokine signature associated with disease severity in chronic fatigue syndrome patients" ( you can read it in full at
http://www.pnas.org/content/114/34/E7150.full ) :
"Although some signs of inflammation have been reported previously in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), the data are limited and contradictory. High-throughput methods now allow us to interrogate the human immune system for multiple markers of inflammation at a scale that was not previously possible. To determine whether a signature of serum cytokines could be associated with ME/CFS and correlated with disease severity and fatigue duration, cytokines of 192 ME/CFS patients and 392 healthy controls were measured using a 51-multiplex array on a Luminex system. Each cytokine’s preprocessed data were regressed on ME/CFS severity plus covariates for age, sex, race, and an assay property of newly discovered importance: nonspecific binding. On average, TGF-Beta was elevated (P = 0.0052) and resistin was lower (P = 0.0052) in patients compared with controls. Seventeen cytokines had a statistically significant upward linear trend that correlated with ME/CFS severity: CCL11 (Eotaxin-1), CXCL1 (GRO?), CXCL10 (IP-10), IFN-?, IL-4, IL-5, IL-7, IL-12p70, IL-13, IL-17F, leptin, G-CSF, GM-CSF, LIF, NGF, SCF, and TGF-Alpha. Of the 17 cytokines that correlated with severity, 13 are proinflammatory, likely contributing to many of the symptoms experienced by patients and establishing a strong immune system component of the disease. Only CXCL9 (MIG) inversely correlated with fatigue duration. "
You may already know that I think inflammatory cytokines are at play in POIS, so I think these new developments could be positive fo us, POIS sufferers. CFS/ME is not a "rare" disease, so there is far more budget and interest for medical research about it. We sill benefit fro this. Moreover, CFS\ME have suffered form its " only-in-your-head" status given by most doctors, for years, not unlike POIS.... because no tests were available ofr diagnosis. For doctors, of you have no objective test to diagnose an illness, well... it does not exist... Sooooooo... coming with new tests, that were not part of the usual blood work, will "reveal" new diseases to the medical profession.
What do you think ?
