A report has been produced by Rosamund Vallings  MB BS of the Invest in ME 2014 conference held on 30th May. It includes a summary of the following sessions:

Prof Jonathan Edwards (London) who spoke about the lessons learnt for ME from his lifelong study of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA).

Angela Vincent (Oxford, UK) spoke about the searches for antibodies in neurological diseases and posed the question as to whether they could be similar to what may be happening with ME.

Jonas Blomberg (Uppsala, Sweden) discussed infection-induced auto-immunity in ME

Mady Hornig (New York, USA) addressed her work on Pathogen Discovery

Carmen Scheibenbogen  (Berlin, Germany) discussed the role of EBV in a subset of ME

Prof Simon Carding (Norwich, East Anglia) looked at the role for leaky gut and intestinal microbiota in the pathophysiology of ME.

Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik (Gold Coast, Australia) updated us on the current knowledge of immunological biomarkers in ME.

James Baraniuk (Washington, USA) discussed his work with MRI and victims of Gulf War Illness (GWI).

Julia Newton (Newcastle, UK) focused on the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS)and its relationship to ME. She explained that there is overlap between the ANS and many diseases associated with fatigue. The experience of fatigue is the same in many diseases. She described the ANS, and said that dysautonomia in ME is likely. The fatigue in 89% of those with ME may be due to Orthostatic Intolerance (OI).

Maureen Hanson (New York,USA) – discussed markers of post-exertional malaise. In ME exercise causes worsening of symptoms. Both cytokines and plasma metabolites are altered compared to controls.

Amolak Bansal (Surrey, UK) discussed diagnosis and treatment of ME within the NHS. His initial comments mentioned that eventually the current exclusion criteria may go on to be included, and that if anything the new ICC can make things more complicated.

Andreas Kogelnik (California,USA) went on to discuss the diagnosis and treatment of ME in the USA. He stressed that this is not a psychiatric disease. He outlined the many activities of the Open Medicine Institute.  They are gathering very big data.

Julian Blanco (Barcelona,Spain) gave an external view of ME research strategies. ME is a social problem with lower visibility, an economic problem (but there is more data on other diseases) and a scientific challenge with no clear target. The situation needs to be reversed.

The Conference DVD will be published in July. Pre-order on their website