OMEGA AGM & Karl Morten - latest Biomedical Research into ME from Oxford, Sept 18th 2021, 2pm UK

Andy

Andy

Retired committee member
"THIS EVENT IS ONLINE ONLY. It will be held on Zoom, hosted by OMEGA. You will be sent a link to the meeting shortly before the start time to the email address you sign up with. This event is FREE. Any enquiries, please email enquire.omega@gmail.com.

OMEGA is a support group for people with ME and those who wish to help them. We are delighted to have Dr Karl Morten with us for our Annual General Meeting.

Dr Karl Morten will present his current research projects investigating the causes and biological mechanisms of ME/CFS from14:30 - 16:00 BST."

Register and further details at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/omeg...arch-into-me-from-oxford-tickets-162977745825
 
Andy said:
Dr Karl Morten will present his current research projects investigating the causes and biological mechanisms of ME/CFS
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from @Ben H twitter thread:

From the Morten Group at Oxford: "Our ME/CFS Raman diagnostic paper is just back from review. They like it! But we need to run a further set of expts with new blood samples. Really important we get the PhD funded in order to collect new bloods."

"In this proposal we will explore this association in detail in ME/CFS, Chronic Lyme and Long Covid examining not only the gut but also the currently unexplored blood biome."

"We propose that the blood biome and its association with a leaky gut could be a pivotal factor in a number of chronic conditions including #ME/cfs, #LymeDisease and #Long covid."

"The tools to study rare L-form bacteria in our blood and tissues are now available and we will utilise new technologies at two research centres at The University of Oxford and Softcell Biological research"

"This PhD project will recruit ME/CFS patients using the current Institute of Medicine (IOM) criteria with follow up clinical assessments in collaboration with experienced ME/CFS clinical researchers..."

..."Lyme patients (Dublin) and Long Covid patients (Oxford) will also be recruited."

"The final part of the PHD will involve the characterisation of L-form bacteria derived from MECFS patients using Raman microscopy. This technique will look for unique L-form fingerprints which we can be used to identify L-forms present in blood cells from patients".

 
Grigor said:
Yes this I heard, the problem is I can't process videos or sounds.
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Ah sorry to hear that. I only joined the webinar for 15 mins today but noticed they were recording it, so I’ll watch more later. It looked interesting - something about, could mitochondria have a role beyond energy production? Could they be involved in pathogen response? He also discussed the microbiome and leaky gut.
 
hinterland said:
Ah sorry to hear that. I only joined the webinar for 15 mins today but noticed they were recording it, so I’ll watch more later. It looked interesting - something about, could mitochondria have a role beyond energy production? Could they be involved in pathogen response? He also discussed the microbiome and leaky gut.
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Thank you so much! Appreciate it!
 
Watching bit by bit I’ve reached the end of KM’s talk (it finishes at about 1 hour 10 minutes). I haven’t watched the Q&A. I need to watch again to really take in what he is saying, but found it very interesting. I’m sorry that I don’t have the capability to provide coherent notes on something so long.
 
he talks a fair bit about this research paper
(see around 22.31 for slide)

https://www.s4me.info/threads/effic...nal-membrane-systems-2021-ravera-et-al.21269/

this is a really in pivotal slide and it
could be really really important so the
brain
is quite small organ in the body but it
uses 20 of the oxygen that we have and
as i said before the oxygen is really
important in the mitochondria so it's
the key thing that's needed to make
energy um the brain also uses most of
the blood in the body you need a good
blood supply to the brain but if you
take away blood supply to the brain
you've only got about five to ten
minutes before you have permanent brain
damage so
energetics and mitochondria are really
important in the brain but look at this
if you look here the amount of
mitochondria in the brain is really low
only five percent of the of the area of
the cell compared to the the heart which
has a huge number of mitochondria and
also the liver so how can an organ that
is the most energetically demanding in
the cell have so few mitochondria and
and how can it function and to make its
energy and
maybe something else is making the
energy and this is what's shown here so
this is another cell that's also very
energetic you probably had a covid
vaccination by now and what that does is
it activates things called b cells so
these b cells are then turned into
things called plasma blasts here and
these are really high energy cells
they're the things that pump out all the
antibody that you generate against
covered 19 to give you that immunity and
that protection and as you can see here
these cells again have very few
mitochondria but what you can't tell
from this picture
if you look at the normal cells is this
these sort of circular structures around
the edge here these are completely new
when this when this cell is activated
with a with ant an antigen uh to cover
19 you you increase the amount of
this is called endoplasmic reticulum
this is the part that makes the
antibodies in simple terms but you don't
increase the number of mitochondria
and what this group has shown is that
this these structures here that are
supposed to just make proteins in the
avian involved in proteins also make
energy right so you're making energy not
only in the mitochondria but you're also
making it in this membrane type
structures here and bacteria look very
much like this they have membrane
structures that make energy so this is a
whole new area of biology in terms of
mitochondria and it goes against
everything we think about mitochondria
we don't think other things can make
energy with oxygen um and i'm not going
to go into the brain because it's even
more complicated but if you know your
physiology this is an axon a nerve cell
here and this is the middle of the axon
which you can see in this
picture here this is a section through
the spinal cord and so these black dark
circles are the axons here in the middle
so they've been
ringed in black this is a cell called an
oligodendrocyte it's a very big cell and
you can see here it sort of links up to
a lot of these fibers and what they're
showing uh in that previous study is
that the membranes that make the myelin
so this is a sheath
the same type of structure like
membranes that go around the end axon
actually makes the atp not the
mitochondria so much so a nerve cell has
different ways of making
energy than say a heart cell as a plasma
plant
Click to expand...

eta:
he then goes on to talk about Prustys work in germany.
starts talking about the microbiome around 25.40
 
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Interesting bit on antibiotics
a great talk by robert martindale that
put on our twitter link have a look at
this it's really really fascinating and
very easy to watch um a couple of points
i'm going to follow up on butyrate
bacteria are the ones that make this
short chain um fatty acids these
directly impact on the brain and there's
feedback between the brain and the gut
you've probably heard about this gut
brain axis so these are crucial and very
important just worth bearing that in
mind the other thing to bear in mind in
terms of ill health is that the
diversity of the bugs in your gut the
number of different types is really
important if you have a very broad
number of bacteria you tend to be very
healthy and what we're finding is that
people have less numbers of bugs or the
wrong type of bugs can be can be sicker
and so the question is is there a
correlation so
anybody watching this probably we have
between twelve hundred and fifteen
hundred species of bacteria in our bowel
but if you were in the amazon rainforest
you've never seen a mcdonald's or you're
eating in through the weed and not been
exposed to you could have up to four
thousand and these people have healthier
guts they don't necessarily live longer
because there's lots of things in the
rainforest that we don't get
in western society but i think the
take-home message is diversity is good
and lack of diversity is not a good
thing and if you take antibiotics
it can radically affect your microbiome
of the gut so this is a nasty quite a
nasty strong antibiotic used for quite
severe gut infections and it can hit
your diversity for two years so it
doesn't come back overnight and in the
us and probably in the uk but not quite
as bad in the uh in the uk by the time
the child's 10 they've had over 10
courses of antibiotics so what is this
doing to our microbiome
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more on disbiosis and leaky gut.
then talks about this research
https://www.s4me.info/threads/plasm...expansion-and-me-cfs-2020-lipkin-et-al.16005/

around 42.00
ll37 and these were raised in
the plasma of patients significantly
higher than the controls now this is an
antimicrobial peptide it makes you
wonder is this a response to a pathogen
as i mentioned before um
it's not the levels you might expect
with a huge infection but there isn't a
huge infection but there is something
going on and this is suggestive of that
now what does this thing actually do it
is really this is quite interesting so
we make it our cells so these are all
epithelial cells they make this ll-37
and what it does is it binds to the
surface of the bacteria you can see here
so this is the lipopolysaccharide that i
mentioned before this thing that can
trigger fatigue and this molecule will
sit on the surface and it's like a
detergent it sort of lies is the this
mod this membrane surface of the bug and
it lies as a bacteria so in a way you're
making um the bacteria into a soup um
and then it can kill them that way
now the only problem with this fact this
these molecules they also have some
interesting effects on mitochondria now
when i dug into the literature to paper
in 1994 um i just started my
mitochondrial work so these peptides can
also hit mitochondria and so maybe you
could wonder are they also not only
hitting the bacteria that come in but
could they be having a secondary effect
on the mitochondria and does this play a
role maybe in cfs and we need to that's
something we need to study
Click to expand...

last part is the research done by Soft Cell,
and KMs groups FMT research.
it may not be the
type of pathogen that's important um you
know in lyme disease the boryllia is
supposed to be the key driver but it it
may just be the the load.
so say you've got a leaky gut maybe it's
the load you allow more in and you can't
deal with them as well and but post
treatment the levels drop significantly
down to 46 so less bacteria in the blood
and and there's an interesting
correlation there but obviously we need
to do more of this work and this is what
the phd will do we'll spend more time
doing that.
so just summarize what
i've said about
the new work
a dysbiotic gut is associated with mecfs
and that's quite clear and if you can
replace it there is evidence that it can
prove symptoms so we need to study this
we need to look at this in in in a more
controlled way with placebos um treated
patients as well
and there is evidence that there's
evidence of gut leak that paper showed
nicely and other studies by maureen
hansen have shown gut leak there is a
gut leak in msfs and also now lipkins
paper showing low grade infection and so
it is tying together that this could be
true and there's this unpublished data
from our collaborators um that there are
these forms of organisms in these in
patients with mbcfs that we can culture
and are much higher levels than controls
and is that how relevant and then what
does it mean and then this is really a
bit of more speculation really we're
going to work with the italian group
we're just starting up some interesting
collaborations because i'm fascinated
could neurons be deficient in these
classic forms of mitochondria which we
know are involved in this innate immune
pathways and could that be why things
can build up in the brain viruses
pathogens you know i hear lots of things
about alzheimer's patients with fungal
molecules in the brain now is that is
that relevant or
is it something to do with the problem
with the mitochondria so
and if you start dealing with pathogens
what has what happens to your ability to
make atp it must be compromised if
you're fighting fighting something else
as well
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