Simon McGrath reports on: the most in-depth, comprehensive and innovative ME/CFS studies ever proposed: it’s the first fruit of Director Dr Francis Collins’s ‘new start’ for ME/CFS at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Dr Nath, who is Chief of the Section of Infections of the Nervous System at the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, will lead the study: and he believes the immune system is where the action is.
Dr Nath said, “Our hypothesis is that post-infectious ME/CFS is triggered by a viral illness that results in immune-mediated brain dysfunction”.
The NIH is taking a very thorough approach to investigating immune (and other) problems. Although it’s relatively small, with 40 patients and 60 controls, the study is extraordinarily comprehensive, with two more studies due to build on its results, culminating, it’s planned, in trials of immunomodulatory agents.
Study highlights
The study will take an astonishingly in-depth look at the immune system, both via the blood and spinal fluid. On the basis of the initial findings, the NIH will decide where to target even more sophisticated tests.
The researchers will use a wide range of measures: thinking tests, metabolic tests that even measure how much energy patients burn as they sleep, autonomic function tests, and self-reported fatigue alongside activity measurement.
Best of all, the study will look at how most of these measures are changed by exercise, focusing on the core feature of ME/CFS. And they will use two types of technology to probe what happens in the brain when patients are hit by exercise.
The most ambitious part of the study will use cutting-edge technology to try to reproduce in the laboratory the clinical or biological abnormalities seen in patients. It could dramatically speed up understanding of the illness and the development of treatments.
The hope is that this intensive approach will crack open the illness so researchers can see more clearly what’s inside – providing clues that could help reveal the mechanism of the illness, and lead to treatments.
Read full article: Extraordinary NIH ME/CFS study may be most comprehensive and in-depth ever
