Jonathan Edwards
"Gibberish"
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I am not sure that I agree that testing of blood cells is meaningless. If mitochondrial dysfunction is at the root of ME symptoms I do not see how it can be limited to muscle. That would not explain symptoms after mental effort or intolerance of noise and light. If anything my impression is that ME patients do not have symptoms consistent with metabolic problems in muscle. People with mitochondrial myopathies have quite different symptoms.
Muscle is a tissue with constant replenishment of cells and the potential for some cell clones to dominate over others. That allows expression of genetic mitochondrial disease. Nerves and brains have very little cell turnover so I find it very hard to see how a genetic mitochondrial problem could present with mental fatigue or light sensitivity coming on quite quickly in some cases. On the other hand a soluble factor interfering with mitochondrial function body-wide could explain such symptoms.
I tend to agree that one was not expecting any general mitochondrial DNA abnormality to show up. But it would have been just conceivable that such an abnormality provided a susceptibility to some other acquired process involving a soluble circulating factor.
Muscle is a tissue with constant replenishment of cells and the potential for some cell clones to dominate over others. That allows expression of genetic mitochondrial disease. Nerves and brains have very little cell turnover so I find it very hard to see how a genetic mitochondrial problem could present with mental fatigue or light sensitivity coming on quite quickly in some cases. On the other hand a soluble factor interfering with mitochondrial function body-wide could explain such symptoms.
I tend to agree that one was not expecting any general mitochondrial DNA abnormality to show up. But it would have been just conceivable that such an abnormality provided a susceptibility to some other acquired process involving a soluble circulating factor.