Immuno-metabolic impact of the multiple sclerosis patients’ sera on endothelial cells of the blood-brain barrier (2020) Sheikh et al

https://jneuroinflammation.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12974-020-01810-8

https://multiplesclerosisnewstoday.com/blood-factors-impair-metabolism-blood-brain-barrier-ms-study/

I thought this could be of interest, since one of Jarred Younger's upcoming studies is testing the hypothesis that the blood brain barrier might be to permeable in ME patients, allowing peripheral immune cells into the brain where they don't belong.

 

This looks to be a good find. Particularly this bit

So the serum of MS patients affected the metabolism of healthy cells. From the article

 

Plus, it would be very interesting to know what other "plasma/serum-swap" experiments have been done in other diseases, and with what results. What would be good search terms to use to find such studies, if they exist? "Plasma swap" and "serum swap" don't bring up much of interest.

Could there be a common circulating factor that simply says "ill"? And which maybe is (partly) responsible for "illness behaviour" like feeling wiped out and having no energy, i.e. one factor common to all sorts of conditions?

Or are there many different disease-specific factors? So that even though they here found a factor affecting cell metabolism in MS it would be a different factor from the one affecting cell metabolism in ME.

 

Many years ago now, some MS patients I knew started taking raspberry extract as it was meant to strengthen the blood brain barrier. It was explained to me that the immune cells should not be able to breach the barrier to damage the myelin. It seemed to me then and now that the fact the barrier is not working properly should be a major focus and that it could have implications for ME.

Medical research all too often seems to be a patchwork with no one looking at the big picture.