Hi, all.
About ten years ago, when the late physicist, Prof. Edward Teller, was still alive, but in his 90s, I had a conversation with him in his office. I told him that I was working on CFS, and he asked me to tell him about it. I described some of the symptoms, and he asked, "Is that like old age?"
This question has stuck with me since. I had to agree that there are some similarities.
Now I've just heard about a paper that I think is very interesting. The researchers compared the degree of methylation of the whole genome for a newborn, a 26-year-old, and a 103-year-old person. They found that the genome-wide methylation decreased as the age increased. This likely has major effects on the expression of many of the genes, and could be a major contributor to the process of aging.
The full paper can be found here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10522.full.pdf+html
Note especially Figure 1A, in which the intensity of the blue color indicates the degree of methylation, starting with the newborn on the inside circle, then the 26-year-old, and finally the 103-year-old at the outer circle.
Since we know from lab testing that there is a methylation deficit in ME/CFS, I suspect that it will be manifested as a lowering of the genome-wide DNA methylation status. Perhaps this is the cause (or a cause) of the similarities between ME/CFS and aging. I think the CDC is doing a study of genome-wide methylation in ME/CFS, so hopefully we will find out soon whether this idea holds up.
Best regards,
Rich
About ten years ago, when the late physicist, Prof. Edward Teller, was still alive, but in his 90s, I had a conversation with him in his office. I told him that I was working on CFS, and he asked me to tell him about it. I described some of the symptoms, and he asked, "Is that like old age?"
This question has stuck with me since. I had to agree that there are some similarities.
Now I've just heard about a paper that I think is very interesting. The researchers compared the degree of methylation of the whole genome for a newborn, a 26-year-old, and a 103-year-old person. They found that the genome-wide methylation decreased as the age increased. This likely has major effects on the expression of many of the genes, and could be a major contributor to the process of aging.
The full paper can be found here:
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/26/10522.full.pdf+html
Note especially Figure 1A, in which the intensity of the blue color indicates the degree of methylation, starting with the newborn on the inside circle, then the 26-year-old, and finally the 103-year-old at the outer circle.
Since we know from lab testing that there is a methylation deficit in ME/CFS, I suspect that it will be manifested as a lowering of the genome-wide DNA methylation status. Perhaps this is the cause (or a cause) of the similarities between ME/CFS and aging. I think the CDC is doing a study of genome-wide methylation in ME/CFS, so hopefully we will find out soon whether this idea holds up.
Best regards,
Rich