SequenceME genetic study - from Oxford Nanopore Technologies, the University of Edinburgh and Action for ME

[Jonathan Edwards]

How confident we are that ME/CFS has a strictly infectious origin ?

We aren't. Moreover the crucial importance of genetics in diseases of infectious origin is known by every medical student. Reiter's syndrome is the paradigm - very strongly predisposed to by HLA-B27. Then there is mannose binding protein deficiency and staph problems, HLA-DQ and post-influenza narcolepsy, lysosomal gene defects and chronic granulomatous disease and no doubt rheumatic fever and post-streptococal glomerulonephritis have genetic predispositions...

 

[V.R.T.]

HLA-DQ and post-influenza narcolepsy,

This would perhaps be an interesting connection to some of the things we've discussed recently but I assume the HLA DQ link didn't stand up in the separate analysis from what Chris apparently said at the Berlin conference.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I assume the HLA DQ link didn't stand up in the separate analysis from what Chris apparently said at the Berlin conference.

The HLA-DQ link was very weak compared to narcolepsy anyway. I was a bit surprised that Chris said that nothing came up on HLA at all. I thought that even with correction there was a weak DQ signal, but DQ is notorious for being misleading at this sort of level so that story probably doesn't not take us anywhere, sadly.

 

[Andy]

Can meaningful analysis be done on 6,000 samples? If for some stupid reason we can’t get the additional 3,000 funded

Yes, absolutely, and is why our hope is for analysis of those samples to be the next step forward.

In terms of costs for future phases, I'm afraid we don't currently have figures that we would want to release for each individual phase. I understand the interest though, and will see if we can come up with our best estimate for each phase.