Community Symposium on the Molecular Basis of ME/CFS Sept 5 (Stanford/Ron Davis)

BrightCandle said:
Jonathan will appreciate Robert Phair's question on whether ME/CFS is an inflammatory process and what actually differs between acute and chronic inflammation and how can we be precise with our language? They seemed to express that its not a precise word but they don't yet know how to express the gradient of responses being seen and what to call it. What I didn't get a good answer to was is the cell types and molecules different and I think he is right that really matters.
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Was thinking the same.
 
I thought @Jonathan Edwards is quite adamant about inflammation actually having a precise meaning that for various reasons people have stopped using.
It is defined as a tissue change mediated by blood vessels, with dilatation, fluid and protein exudation and cell emigration. It makes the part red, hot, swollen, painful and malfunctioning, although these things vary in degree (chronic inflammation is not very red and may be painless).
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ChronicallyOverIt said:
@jnmaciuch in the Stanford PET scan presentation they are using a new tracer called GPR84. I remember from the Jared younger thread you were versed in tracers. Have you heard of this tracer before? Thoughts on it? Also this new TREM1 tracer seems interesting
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Unfortunately wasn’t able to catch this presentation though I saw some of the morning ones.

It’s not a tracer that anyone in my department mentioned using so I don’t have any specifics to pass on about it. From a quick glance, it seems to be a similar story as TSPO—something which has been observed to strongly increase in surface expression in immune cells undergoing phenotypic and metabolic reprogramming under stimulation, but can be induced under many different conditions. You can guess that some other signaling molecules may be likely to be produced by cells with induced expression of that marker, but it would just be a guess.

Having good data showing that this G-coupled protein receptor is strongly upregulated might be interesting in its own right, but I’d caution against assuming any “if there’s smoke there’s fire” situation relationship re: other immune signaling.
 
I haven't seen any of these presentations. Was there talk of an increased signal for a microglial activity marker? It would not come as a surprise if there was but to take it seriously I would want to see a specific distribution pattern different from normal. The thing that worried me about the Nakatomi pictures was that they were just like a normal distribution only slightly stronger. That could easily be due to artefact. A specific distribution would be far more convincing.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
I haven't seen any of these presentations. Was there talk of an increased signal for a microglial activity marker?
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The PET presentation I did catch from the Stanford group did not go into specifics this deep, it was more of an overview showing full body PET with TSPO was signalling far stronger and different areas than healthy controls, notably the shoulder/neck area (they alluded to “coat hanger syndrome”) and quadriceps. They were mostly talking about using PET for diagnosis of ME/CFS. I believe they said this paper would be out later this year or early next year showing these results.

They then went on to explain they can tune tracers to cross different barriers, BBB, and that development of tracers for ME/CFS could help diagnosis. She also eluded that development of novel tracers at their lab can be quite quick, about 1 year at max speed.
 
ChronicallyOverIt said:
an overview showing full body PET with TSPO was signalling far stronger and different areas than healthy controls, notably the shoulder/neck area (they alluded to “coat hanger syndrome”) and quadriceps.
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Shoulder/neck and quadriceps would be fascinating if real. I cannot think of another situation where that pattern comes up.

Polymyalgia rheumatica shows increased water content on MRI in tissues around the shoulder and hip. That suggests genuine low-level inflammation with increased permeability of vessels to water. The pictures suggest that the changes relate to fascial or epimyseal areas around muscles. There are potential ways to make sense of that in terms of immune complexes. As far as I know MRI shows nothing in ME/CFS in these areas.

I wonder if anyone has imaged flu myalgia with PET/TSPO.

I am probably not holding my breath yet though.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Shoulder/neck and quadriceps would be fascinating if real. I cannot think of another situation where that pattern comes up.
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Hopefully it’s real, there was no numbers presented just some screen grabs of the PET scans. She also said people thought she was crazy to do full body scan and after her findings she was grateful she did since they saw such odd results. There was brief mention that the odd quadricep results could point towards POTS causes.

Very interested in your take after the recordings come out, these are my notes and remembrance of the presentation.
 
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