Preprint: Physical phenotype of blood cells is altered in COVID-19, Kubankova et al, 2021

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.12.429482v1.full

 

Would increased expression of proteins related to the actin cytoskeleton result in increased cell stiffness?

 

Red blood cell deformability was an old lead of Simpson's, I think? That was where the recommendation to take fish oil and evening primrose oil came from back in the 90s.

I wonder if COVID research will end up repeating or reviewing a lot of the same ideas looked at for ME?

 

More recently OMF have been talking about it.

I think that's a very safe bet.

 

Due to the muscle weakness and difficulty maintaining physical effort in pwME I recall looking into basics of muscle physiology a while back - such as what are actin and myosin - and being a bit taken aback by how little this aspect of physiology had been looked at in pwME. Or perhaps I wasn't looking in the right places!

I found, way back, a paper which if I recall found raised level of free actin in the blood of patients. I recall this was work carried out by Spanish researchers. I contacted the primary author for more information about the paper and I don't think I ever heard back. I can't find it now.

Anyway, I suspected with mild, physical challenge that perhaps free actin in blood might be helping/interesting area to look at in pwME. I spoke with ME knowledgeable general physician and mentioned this to him. He took my musings about this on board. I don't know if this is something he ever followed up on or if this was something pretty straightforward to teat for via mainstream labs?

More recently I saw this:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0889159119307627
Identification of actin network proteins, talin-1 and filamin-A, in circulating extracellular vesicles as blood biomarkers for human myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
Akiko Eguchiabc1 Sanae Fukudadef 1HirohikoKuratsunedef Junzo Nojimag Yasuhito Nakatomih Yasuyoshi Watanabeefi Ariel E.Feldsteinc

It's not an area I know much about so I'd be really interested to know if there are groups repeating and investigating this type of work? Maybe of use for diagnosis? Or is that actually a bit more shaky science wise? Might give an indication of why patients have some of the symptoms (especially muscular, pain and lack of repeatability of muscle use) and difficulties that they have?

 

In case it helps, we have a discussion thread on that paper here, Identification of actin network proteins, talin-1 and filamin-A, in circulating extracellular vesicles as blood biomarkers...ME/CFS 2019, Eguchi et al

 

Thanks Andy

 

Ah yes! I remember. Nothing like reinventing the wheel. But if it means we leave no stone unturned, I can live with that. It's very possible we've overlooked something over the decades.

 

I fixed that quote for you.

 

and hopefully finding some new treatments for old ideas.

When I met Dr Simpson (he came to see some of the UK groups) the only idea he had was the oils (by they did nothing for any of my ME or POTS symptoms sadly).

 

Thanks for the laugh --- skim reading (not in a patient mood) and the words that leapt out were:

"the oils"

The words in my head were Long John Silver-esk ---"the oils"

 

Simpson came to our city in the early 90's, and 'the oils' were prescribed to everyone. I took Efamol for about one year and stopped after it made no difference.

 

Thanks for posting @Andy - looks interesting. The Stanford researcher who looked into deformability of red blood cells in ME is now aware of it.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1362238566932246531

 

Now published, https://www.cell.com/biophysj/fulltext/S0006-3495(21)00454-9