Dr. Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik at Grifffith University in Australia says her team is on the cusp of a breakthrough for a biomarker
Their is another ME/CFS research team in Australia (one in Sth Australaia) following up on a different biomarker too then what the Griffith Uni team is doing.
Ive been in their original research and in more recent times (last year) their followup study which was done as a confirmation one 7 years after the original.
Hopefully they got enough of us back from the original group to have made this study good enough to be able to get published when completed (I heard some of us had even moved overseas so they trying to track us down from everywhere). I think it was they needed at least 10 or maybe it was 20 of us from the original study years ago to confirm their findings.
Their biomarker (thou maybe not specific?? so maybe would have to be used with another or other ME/CFS biomarkers) is to do with the brain and shrinkage of a certain part of our brain. In the first study, they found that they could actually tell how long ME/CFS (CCC defined) people had been sick for by the amount of shrinkage. The longer we are ill with ME.. the more of our brain shrinkage there is. Hence why the follow up 7 years later to see if that still holds true for the orignals and confirms first study.
My brain now should be just like someone who had ME/CFS 7 years longer then me in the original study and should of worsened along their graph. (they also did some first time study of some completely not looked at before in ME things.. eg the very backs of our eyes which is the best indication on what is going on with nerves into our brains).
Even if they didnt manage to get enough of us back for the follow up confirmtion part of the latest study, their latest study will still be very interesting due to the extra things studied this time with us and a new group of ME/CFS people.
Anyway.. if you have ME watch out for the Australia studies as most coming out of here use the CCC definition or maybe even the international ME one in their participants selection or ME immune markers (on top of having the participants meet the Fukuda or other CFS defintions too). Hopefully with them being so selective.. we may see usable biomarkers coming out of Australia.