Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
'Improving signs of T cell exhaustion' sounds an awful lot like a wing and a prayer to me.
Our publication on elevated ATG13 showed that a significant number of ME/CFS patients display serological evidence of autophagy disruption. We have shown that this deficit in autophagy is due to the chronic activation of mTOR. Without properly functioning autophagy, there is significant cellular stress, immune activation, and not enough energy for the cell to do well.
Rapamycin is an mTOR inhibitor. It is an FDA approved drug that was initially developed to protect patients during a kidney transplant. It has a well understood safety profile. This study will track autophagy markers and ME/CFS symptoms in patients who are treated with low-dose rapamycin by participating clinicians.
One of the key upstream regulators of mitochondrial protein expression is TOR Complex I (TORC1 whose catalytic subunit is mTOR, the mechanistic Target Of Rapamycin). We found that TORC1 activity is elevated in ME/CFS lymphoblasts. The expression of mitochondrial enzymes involved in electron transport is known to be upregulated by TORC1 via selective activation of translation via inhibitory phosphorylation of the TORC1 target 4E-BP1 [20]. In addition to its actions on the translation of nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins, TORC1 upregulates the expression of transcription factors PGC-1α (transcriptionally via Yin Yang 1) and TFAM (translationally), which respectively induce the transcription of nuclear and mitochondrial genes encoding mitochondrial proteins [19]. Most notable amongst the mitochondrial proteins whose translation is upregulated by TORC1 are nuclear-encoded subunits of Complexes I and V [20], the two respiratory complexes whose expression we found to be the most evidently elevated in the whole cell proteomes of ME/CFS lymphoblasts.
If anyone has any insight into the science behind the testing they are ordering,
That's wild. Are they not responding at all, or just not answering what dosage to take?In the weeks since, I have not been able to get a response from the clinic regarding their recommended dosage, so have been left to my own devices - this has been my biggest complaint so far.
Those who man the front desk respond, but the response is that they will ask the practitioner to get in touch, which has yet to happen. It has been a couple weeks since I made an effort - apart from my frustration, it hardly seems worth it as I've already been pushed into making a decision - but I shall try again via phone in the coming week.Thanks for sharing @DHagen.
That's wild. Are they not responding at all, or just not answering what dosage to take?
Hi,DHagen I was in a study for Multi vitamin, ALA, NAC, ACETYL L carnitine (without Malic Acid) in high does for Me/Cfs. It didn’t do anything positive, I probably deteriorated. It is a bit of a worry that they are recommending the MitoCore product. More widely, I don’t think there is any evidence base for them to be used. The two drugs listed have been talked about a significant amount and I hope they will help you. Interesting to hear about how you go.Hello all. Just writing to share some additional information concerning another patient's experience at the CoRE clinic.
I was accepted into the clinic in January of this year. It took a couple months to receive an initial telehealth appointment and my one-day, in-person evaluation followed a couple months after that. The tests run and blood labs ordered appear to be identical to those described by Phantom above, save for the fact that they did have me do a NASA Lean Test (which was borderline - apparently had it suggested more severe POTS it would have been followed with a tilt-table) and the "BrainCheck" server was down (I was told that I would be notified when it was up and running and could do this test at home - no word as yet).
After the tests, I had a follow-up telehealth appointment to go over the results. There wasn't much to discuss - NeuroCatch flagged some "minor" cognitive impairment, dysautonomia, and a handful of slightly abnormal blood results - and the practitioner seemed very harried as she rushed through these. Unsurprisingly, the treatment plan appeared to be a standard template. They recommended the following:
MitoCore (this is essentially a multi-vitamin + NAC, ALA, Malic Acid, and Acetyl L-Carnitine)
Oxaloacetate (no dosage specified - see below)
LDN (starting at 0.5mg and titrating up)
Physical Therapy for Autonomic Support
This last is, I gather, a program developed by Dr. Putrino. I have been doing this via telehealth. So far, it is big on breathing exercises (similar to 4-7-8 breathing, though no ratio is specified) and very short (15-30 second) sets of very light "exercise" (e.g. supine heel
Happy to answer any questions if anyone would like to know more.
Thank you, Holinger. I am very sorry to hear that your experience taking these was not only non-productive, but may have made the situation worse; that's horrible. Was the study published?Hi,DHagen I was in a study for Multi vitamin, ALA, NAC, ACETYL L carnitine (without Malic Acid) in high does for Me/Cfs. It didn’t do anything positive, I probably deteriorated. It is a bit of a worry that they are recommending the MitoCore product. More widely, I don’t think there is any evidence base for them to be used. The two drugs listed have been talked about a significant amount and I hope they will help you. Interesting to hear about how you go.
100% with you there.and it's hard not to want to try