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Here’s another interesting LongCovid study conducted in mice, identifying cross-reactivity with antibodies. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.18.24309100v1.full.pdf

As if one cue: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02010-7 Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, is more sceptical. “Things like long COVID are really, really hard to reiterate in animal models,” he says, and it is unclear how well the symptoms observed in mice...

No, clearly I don’t mean “torturing humans”. But that may mean consenting volunteers undertaking 2 day invasive CPETs, or trying therapies with significant side-effect profiles, or donating our bodies for post-mortem studies. What I want to see from our charities is hard, driving ambition in...

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the pain, suffering and - if you want to use this language - torture that ME causes to people. The pretense is that a blanket refusal to consider animal studies has no downsides. The reality is that if such a policy delays significant...

Doubtless there are people who would not stomach such studies. The same can be said about the working of an abattoir. But just as there are people who do slaughter, slice and package our chicken, there are people who can manage such animal work. But we mustn’t look at such things in isolation...

The problem is that the charity sector is the largest funder of medical research. In other disease areas, the charity sector tends to fund more exploratory studies which cannot get government funding. What I want from a medical charity is a commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve a...

Clearly I am not qualified to take a strong view on the efficacy of animal models, but the point that has been made here is that there are qualified and competent people who do see value in animal studies. Qualified scientific viewpoints clearly vary. I am mindful that there are many cases...

Not quite right - this thread was first started after 2 UK ME/CFS charities stated to me, quote “our position on using animals in research is unequivocal - we don’t fund it”. Another said similar. Regarding the limitations of different research methodologies - you will know these better than me...

Well many people have thought about that. So the question of morality of testing on animals (and whether it should be done in ME/CFS) essentially boils down to the simple question of “are you vegan”?

Well, on a practical level, many of us do eat meat, poison and trap mice, kill slugs etc. All things which our society does not accept being done to other humans. So many of us do differentiate between human and non-human animals on a daily basis.

I would agree with you that animals exercised to exhaustion are not in any way a proxy for ME/CFS. The question is, if insights can be gained from animal testing, should we be doing it? that is significant as the UK ME/CFS charities all refuse to fund animal research. This would include...

A load of our current medications were developped before we had any understanding of the mechanism underpinning them. While the idea of building-up a formal mechanistic understanding to support drug development is very attractive, is that how many major drugs have been developed, or is there a...

many pigs in the UK are slaughtered using CO2 asphyxiation. That doesn’t disprove your point (about which I simply have no insight) but I do eat pork which will have been slaughtered that way.

The study I am referring to was not an animal model of ME/CFS, they injected mice with extracts of blood from ppl with LongCovid, and those mice then exhibited symptoms. Having used mouse poison in the past, I don’t have an issue with undertaking studies which result in the death of mice...

Given the pre-print released this weekend, showing that IgG from people with LongCovid, injected into mice caused the mice to exhibit symptoms, I felt this thread was relevant again. was it a major strategic mistake to have done such little murine research into ME/CFS? What part of that trial...

Exactly this - we need to ensure we engage people experiencing this disease (and arguably even more importantly - their families) but who aren't fully versed on the politics and nomenclature.

:emoji_clap::emoji_clap::emoji_clap::emoji_clap: Thank you Professor - that is a very useful insight. For what it's worth: So long as the person I am speaking with respects the impact and reality of the disease for me, I am not too bothered about the name. There is a GP who is running the...

Developing the 'Search Engine Optimisation' problem: (This is fundamental because google searching is how most people get information. If ME charities are high on the results, they will receive more clicks and will influence more opinions.) We all know the reasons pwME prefer the term 'ME', but...

My view is that there are already too many ME charities. Adding an additional one would just increase the problem. Ideally a Long Covid charity would figure something out. Alternatively it's about finding new trustees for the ME association - 4 out of 5 of their trustees are way over the...

The NHS website links to the ME Association website: https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chronic-fatigue-syndrome-cfs/ Honestly I hear this argument any time anyone has any suggestions: "Nothing can be done because ME is so discriminated against". It's incredibly defeatist, and results in nothing...