What biomedical research progress in the past 18 months?

This paper:

The biological challenge of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: a solvable problem

by @Jonathan Edwards and several patients, that summarised the biomedical state-of-play in ME/CFS, was published in Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior in April 2016, i.e. 18 months ago.

I'm wondering if it seems as though we've made any concrete progress since then, @Jonathan Edwards, @Simon M.

 

I think since then there has been metabolics work done which is interesting and may be very important. But I feel we are still at the stage of research providing potential clues which need following up with bigger research projects rather than anything definitive.

 

I'm waiting to see what Mark Davis has found in regards to the T-cells and a possible antigen that he talked about at the Stanford Symposium.

 

I don't think there has been anything definitive. A lot more people are working on the immunology and mitochondrial metabolism. There are likely to be publications on T cells in the spring I think. There have been useful negative studies providing a consensus of an absence of evidence for persistent viruses or an inherent NK defect. Whether there is an NK defect induced by a plasma factor is less clear.

 

Good question.

In my view we only reached the start line for biomedical research a few years ago and there has been some structural progress since, attracting new researchers and a gradual increase in funding and interest, but certainly no breakthrough as yet. Which isn’t too bad in that timescale.

I agree with the comments above.

As for specific areas, I’d highlight:

1. Problems generating energy in general. This would include glycolysis as well as mitochondria and also the repeat exercise, and even a single-exercise tests on patients. The results are still all over the place and need sorting out. This includes metabolomics as well as Seahorse, any other relevant methods and also exercise tests. Stress testing remains important, as ever.

2. The other area progressing is immunology. If the rituximab study shows a strong positive result when it reports next year that will really shake things up. It’s just frustrating that the research is needed results at the moment and we don’t . Then there is the T cell work. I’m particularly interested in Mark Davis’s work on clonal expansion. I don’t know if this is what Jonathan is referring to when he talks about publication next spring.

And as @Adrian says, we need much bigger studies as part of trying to nail down these findings. Doing multiple experiments on the same cohort of patients should help identify and tease out any sub-groups. The UK mecfs biobank could be a huge asset here.

A shorter answer to your question “has there been much progress since our paper came out?” is: “not much”.

 

Fluge/Mella's pyruvate dehydrogenase paper was published less then a year ago, IMO a very important piece of the puzzle if verified
Dr Davis has made some incremental steps that are not released yet, Janet talked about some of it at the other place

 

I don't know if this question fits here, if not, may I ask to move it?

What happened to the retroviral research line, like e.g. by Mikovits and DeFreitas? The findings seemed contradictory to me (some found something, some didn't). Why was it definitely concluded this is the wrong direction?

 

I think that needs a new thread of its own, if you'd like to start one, @Inara (thanks for asking! )

 

The retrovirus from Mikovits turned out to be a lab contaminant - clearly shown by the exact sequence of the virus matching a contamination source. It made no real sense, being a mouse virus anyway and there being no epidemiology to fit. This was sorted out around 2013-4 by an international group.

 

Okay. I will copy your answers into the new thread, ok?

 

Okay, it's here:
https://www.s4me.info/index.php?threads/question-concerning-xmrv.790/#post-13561