from end of this March 19 article:Dr. Natelson was part of a team of researchers led by Steven Schutzer, MD, an immunologist at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School, that in 2011 reported finding a unique protein signature in the spinal fluid of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis that was not present in healthy controls. The study was published in the open access journal PLOS One in 2011. But there were limitations to that study.
“At the time we did it, we needed to pool spinal fluid from over 15 patients in order to have an adequate sample to run in order to discover the proteins, and so we didn't know whether the discrete proteins we found were distributed equally among all participants or concentrated in one or two outliers,” Dr. Natelson explained.
“But now that technology has advanced, we are collecting spinal fluid from another 40 patients and 15-20 controls via a major study being funded by the National Institutes of Health, and we are able to do much smaller pooling — maybe groups of just three or four instead of 15 or more.”
The study is still recruiting patients; at press time, at least 15 more participants were needed. Patients are reimbursed for their time, but must be willing to stop taking all brain-active medications for the duration of the study. To find out more, call 212-844-6665 or go to www.painandfatigue.com.
http://journals.lww.com/neurotodayo...eport_Gives_a_New_Name,_New_Diagnostic.1.aspx