Open Sweden: ME/CFS lactate, glucose and hypoxanthine

An ad is currently being circulated in Swedish ME groups on social media, a research study led by prof Jonas Bergquist at Uppsala University that is currently recruiting.

It's a study on altered energy metabolism in ME/CFS, focusing mainly on lactate, glucose and hypoxanthine.

(I couldn't find any info about this study on the ME/CFS Collaborative Research Center at Uppsala University's website, nor on the OMF website's page on Uppsala's research that it redirects to.)

They are inviting people mainly in Västa Götaland region, who have been diagnosed with ME/CFS according to the Canadian consensus criteria, and healthy controls too.

They are offering home visits for the tests (blood tests + light physical & mental exertion challenge).

 

I have received copies of all the documents from the Ethical Review Authority now, too Too many, too large to upload them all here, but feel free to ask if you want more details on something.

Ethical approval was obtained on 21 July 2021.

Other people involved in this project are: professor emeritus Ola Saugstad, Oslo, Norway (advisor) and Anders Tageson, MD (responsible for collecting the samples).

 

Some auto-translated bits:

Original project title: Förändringar av laktat, glukos och hypoxantinnivåer i blod från patienter med myalgisk encefalomyelit (ME) under mental och lätt fysisk ansträngning.

 

Interesting. Thank you for sharing! Had never heard of hypoxanthine. Had it ever been tested in relation to ME?

 

I don't know if it has been researched in relation to ME before. Here's what the Background section in the ethics application says:

 

Thank you! Very interesting and I'm looking forward to the results.

 

Lower Hypoxanthine, and altered glucose and lactate levels, were associated with self reported PEM in this study, Post-Exertional Malaise Is Associated with Hypermetabolism, Hypoacetylation and Purine Metabolism Deregulation in ME/CFS Cases, 2019, McGregor et al.

 

From the Overview section of the ethics application:

 

Thank you Andy. It looks fascinating! It looks like a good lead.

 

The inclusion of elite athletes as controls is interesting. I wonder why they didn't also include sedentary healthy controls?

 

Also, this earlier study reported lower hypoxanthine in pwME, Metabolic profiling reveals anomalous energy metabolism and oxidative stress pathways in CFS, 2017, Armstrong et al

 

Interesting, I just found out via test that I have low xanthine. is that the same as hypoxanthine?

 

Maybe because we ME-patients work out metabolically all day he he

 

There was talk in the 90s about ME patients being in a sense comparable to highly trained athletes, in that both groups are functioning at the limits of their endurance.

I don't know whether that comparison is meaningful or not, though.

 

And this recent study appears to have found normal levels of hypoxanthine, that's if I'm interpreting the data correctly (supplemental data set 1).

https://www.s4me.info/threads/a-map...atigue-syndrome-2021-fluge-mella-et-al.22052/

 

The ad/invite to take part in the study is available to download from Uppsala University's website (the link is currently being shared in Swedish ME groups on social media):

https://kemi.uu.se/digitalAssets/967/c_967098-l_3-k_annons-mecfs-laktat-patienter-och-anho-riga.pdf

 

Jonas Bergquist shared some preliminary findings from this study in a TV interview today (video, 13 minutes, in Swedish).

 

The programme is geofenced outside the EU/EEC so haven't watched myself but based on the English summaries in Anil's twitter thread below they found some interesting mitochondrial markers during very light physical exertion. Finding markers without having to put pwME through the whole 2-day CPET thing would be great.

But where did the claim that ME is now sometimes labelled MS-CCD (Multisystem Complex Chronic Disease) come from? Haven't we enough names? Is MS-CCD a Swedish thing?
https://twitter.com/user/status/1518661128997552132

 

I doubt it. I've never heard of it. I tried googling a literal translation of the expression, but I got no results at all in Swedish.