Simmaron research blog post, by Cort Johnson, 12 February 2017: Inflammation Test Could be Tailor-Made for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Are the Mitochondria To Blame?
“More than 90 percent of all noncommunicable diseases of aging are associated with chronic inflammation” David Furman – Stanford Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection
Inflammation is a big deal in the medical world. Even mild inflammation, if it’s consistently present, is known to increase one’s risk of getting cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and many others. Standard tests for inflammation such as C-reactive protein or cholesterol, however, are often unrevealing. For instance, inflammation is a key driver of heart disease, but the first sign for many of heart problems is still a heart attack.
Chronic, low levels of inflammation are found in many serious diseases. Likewise it’s been said that chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia (FM) are inflammatory diseases, but standard tests for inflammation often indicate that none is present. Dr. Montoya believes that current inflammation tests are missing a lot and that future tests will be able to detect the kind of inflammation occurring in ME/CFS.
Given that tests for inflammation are relatively crude, it makes sense that significant efforts would be directed to developing a better test. It’s no surprise that Mark Davis at Stanford is involved.
Davis’s Institute for Immunity, Transplantation and Infection is spitting out interesting findings like there’s no tomorrow. Coffee drinkers and dark chocolate lovers were recently pleased to learn that metabolites associated with caffeine and dark chocolate were associated with increased longevity and reduced inflammation. In fact, incubating cells with these metabolites shut off their inflammatory response.
A 2015 study overturned decades of perceived wisdom that self-attacking or auto-reactive lymphocytes are mostly weeded out early in childhood. (They’re actually very common in adults.) Davis upended another pillar of orthodoxy when he determined that environment – the microbes, toxins, foods, etc. that we encounter – have far more of an impact on our immune system than our genes. Davis found, for instance, that a single cytomegalovirus infection causes stunningly large and permanent changes to our immune systems.
Davis is bold enough to want to replace all mouse research forever (“Free the mice!”) with a human based approach using immune modeling. In 2015 the Bill Gates foundation gave him $50 million to figure out how to build more effective vaccines. Lastly and most importantly for us, Davis is one of the luminaries sitting on the Open Medicine Foundation’s Scientific Board. A friend of Ron Davis, I met him at the Davis’ Palo Alto fundraiser a year or so ago. (He said when Ron Davis asks you to do something, you do it).
Davis may have come up with the best test yet for inflammation – an apt subject for ME/CFS and FM patients. In fact this test sounds like it was made for people with chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia.
Old Before Their Time?
The study originated in an attempt to quantify the link between inflammation and something perhaps pertinent to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia – aging. While the evidence is sketchy, it does suggest that people with ME/CFS and/or FM might be aging faster. Decreased brain gray matter, shortened telomere lengths, gait alterations, and the cognitive and sleep issues, could all reflect a group of patients who are aging a bit before their time.
The Study
Scientists develop inflammation test that may predict cardiovascular disease Cell Syst. 2016 Oct 26;3(4):374-384.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.cels.2016.09.009. Epub 2016 Oct 13. Defective Signaling in the JAK-STAT Pathway Tracks with Chronic Inflammation and Cardiovascular Risk in Aging Humans. Shen-Orr SS1, Furman D2, Kidd BA2, Hadad F3, Lovelace P4, Huang YW4, et. al.
