Metabolism has its own regulating system, though it does interlock with immune, neurological and hormonal factors, and of course it all ties into both inherited and epigenetics. This could be very interesting in the short term rather than the long, as Ron Davis and colleagues might do some of their own testing and he is pushing to operate in time frames of days rather than years.
I don't really understand this but here are some thoughts ---
It shouldn't take that much to pull some samples and test both the method used in this paper (elisa/immune assay?) and the method proposed by Ron Davis and others i.e. Mass Spectrometry (sphingolipids etc). Do they give the same results/which is cheaper etc. Previous investigations have looked at ME/CFS and other diseases e.g. Lymes which have similar symptoms; however, until you understand these diseases then presumably they could turn out to be the same/related.
Potentially, i.e. if this test were validated, as well as a diagnostic test this could provide a means of assessing treatment options e.g. altering gut bugs (Ian Lipkin's recent publication).
Presumably the obvious candidates to fund such a study include NIH (Vicky Whittemore) and the European Union (Horizon 2020).
I think the fact that Jonathan Edwards has commented that
"The paper is not that well written but the differences reported look substantial. I think I need to see it replicated by a lab with no commercial interest in the findings." suggests that this is worth further investigation.
Does anyone know it this possible test came up at the Invest in ME conference in London (June 2017)?
Anyone fancy raising it with European Union (Horizon 2020) - I've tried them before and didn't appear to do very well.
Anyone fancy raising it with NIH?