Ron Davis's trypanosome 'signature' finding (IIMER conference 2018)

There was a little bit of discussion about this when people were tweeting about it from the conference but I'm watching the conference DVD now and this seems quite striking. I hope the biomedical brains here (such as @Jonathan Edwards!) might weigh in on how to think about it.

Davis reported that the gene expression in PWME is very similar to that in trypanosome (a blood parasite) and other parasite infection, compared with nearly 100,000 other disease signatures. His team is currently making DNA probes against all known trypanosomes and parasites. He said that in West Africa, you can detect trypanosomes easily in the blood but rarely see them in infections in East Africa even though they're present. He wonders if we all have a trypansome infection or whether having a trypanosome infection is one route to ME.

If the latter, I don't understand why EBV etc. wouldn't give the same ME signature because we know from the Dubbo study that EBV is one of several viral routes to ME.

Anybody with relevant expertise care to weigh in? Should we all be rushing out to get ourselves tested for trypanosomes (although if we've got the East African version, it wouldn't get picked up, presumably)?

 

Although he says that trypanosomes may cause ME with 'high efficiency' so maybe that would be why, if the other infections are less efficient at producing it (and from the Dubbo study, the ME rate was about 11% from EBV and the other infections they were following).

 

Can't answer any of your questions, just wanted to point out that your title suggests that the conference was next year.

 

Thanks, fixed it!

 

Oh! I thought everyone would have them if I did. I guess not!

Another thing he mentions is that trypanosomes cause sleeping sickness and that the treatment for that is suramin, which of course Robert Naviaux used in his autism trial and is interested in for ME.

Ron said he doesn't know what to make of that connection.

 

Is this parasite also indigenous to India. My aunt' s ME came on after a " holiday of a lifetime" ?
Doctors never took suggestion of foreign parasitic infection seriously, and she is mow too ill to get out of bed for any specialist testing .

 

many years ago I remember there being some speculation about Rickettsia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickettsia

eta:
"Being obligate intracellular parasites, the Rickettsia survival depends on entry, growth, and replication within the cytoplasm of eukaryotic host cells (typically endothelial cells).[8] Rickettsia cannot live in artificial nutrient environments and is grown either in tissue or embryo cultures"

"Rickettsia species are transmitted by numerous types of arthropod, including chigger, ticks, fleas, and lice, and are associated with both human and plant disease. Most notably, Rickettsia species are the pathogens responsible for typhus, rickettsialpox, Boutonneuse fever, African tick bite fever, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, Flinders Island spotted fever and Queensland tick typhus (Australian tick typhus).[9]

 

The ones that cause sleeping sickness are found only in Africa, apparently. But obviously not all PWME have been to Africa! If trypanosomes are the answer for all of us, they must be a different kind, presumably.

 

Is trypanosome one of the antigens found by Mark Davis in the T cell clonal expansión analysis ?

 

Has anyone else noticed that a fair number of folks report travel to undeveloped countries before developing ME? It's entirely anecdotal, but this type of travel seems to pop up more than one would expect.

 

Damn near everyone has gotten chigger bites if they've ever walked out in the grass.

 

The first time I heard of 'chiggers' was visiting a small village in Malawi and the community members had collectively purchased 2 pigs - but they didn't have rubber boots to wear to feed and tend to the pigs and protect them from chiggers - all they needed to buy one pair of rubber boots for them to share, was my pocket change. It was yet another sobering lesson in the vast disparity in income.

I didn't get sick with ME until about 6 years later, so doubt chiggers are my trigger.

 

Will all those who wish to take part in the trial to establish whether drinking pints of cider increases the chance of succumbing to ME, or worsens the chance of recovery from it, please form an orderly queue?

 

Can I be a control with red wine?

 

Yep, mine was during a work trip to India (though it wasn't my first trip there and I'd been to quite a few other developing nations previously). I'm not sure this points to a specific infection though, rather that we already know that ME/CFS seems to be brought on after a general assault on the immune system. Travel to a new country exposes you a a huge number of new pathogens to which you have no acquired immunity (we joke about 'Delhi belly', but when my Indian colleagues come to the UK we normally lose a few to head colds that lay them low for days when the average European would just get the sniffles). I think it is the general exposure to lots of new bugs that might explain anecdotal links of ME/CFS and travel rather than a specific infectious vector.

 

Just thinking out loud, I wonder what happens to your gut microbiome when you are suddenly exposed to foreign food, water, and whatever else might impact the microbiome in a country like India.