Christmas greeting from Olav Mella and Øystein Fluge via Fokus På ME

Fokus på ME (Focus on ME) is a small Norwegian charity organising ME-conferences and fundraising for ME research by Olav Mella and Øystein Fluge at Haukeland university hospital.

You can read an introduction of Fokus På ME in English here. 68 000 NOK (6 800 EUR, 7 500 USD, 5 800 GBP) has been raised so far. There is a PayPal button here for those who wish to contribute to the fundraising

The researchers have recorded a three minute Christmas greeting for Fokus på ME to share on their website.
The video greeting is in Norwegian, but here's a transcript (hastily) translated into English:

Fluge: Here is a little Christmas greeting from us in the research group for ME in Bergen at the cancer ward. We’d like to thank you for all the support we have received from far and wide and to everyone who is interested in our projects. It’s now ten year since we began research into ME and in this period we’ve done both several studies to try out different types of medicamentary treatment and we’ve focused a lot on lab work in order to try to shed light upon disease mechanisms in ME.

Even though things go up and down, we feel that there is a steady progress. There is an increasing effort many places worldwide and that contributes to shed light upon this disease.

We believe this is something that should be affected by treatment. We believe this is a disease that can be reversible. We’re hoping to contribute in the next years to try to develop efficient treatment.

The premise for doing this is understanding more of the mechanisms in the disease. That’s the key for making a good intervention eventually.

Mella: One of the things that has accelerated in the last years is cooperation. We’re cooperating internally with the University in Bergen and with the Paediatric Ward here. We are cooperating nationally with the university in Oslo. We've also had a multi center study together with Tromsø, Trondheim, Notodden, Bergen and Oslo. This is necessary in order to make progress. What we do is important, but we’re working together with others. They are finding other jigsaw pieces and we contribute with our things. There’s also good international relations with research groups in Europe and in USA.

Fluge: It’s interesting to see how the interest from many of the big hospitals and institutions in the world has changed during the ten years we’ve been working with this. From very little activity and a bit perhaps shabby and dubious things to becoming a field of priority for many of the big universities, particularly in USA. This leads to resources entering the field which again will lead to answers.

Mella: So with these words of optimism from our side, we’d like to thank you for all support and wish you a Merry Christmas and a prospering new year.

Fluge: Merry Christmas

 

Yes the situation has changed. Still no tangible results for us patients but we're getting closer.