Simon
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Interesting blog from Cort about ground-breaking work from Stanford immunologist Mark Davis, who is also running a huge 600-patient study of mecfs immune profiles:
The Chicken or the Egg? Stanford Study Suggests Immune Problems are Made Not Born - Health Rising
Normally identical twins look pretty-much the same biologicaly as they have the same set of genes as well as growing up (and in the womb) in very similar environments. But Mark Davis showed this doesn't apply to their immune systems which appear to be very sensitive to their particular environment* and history. For example, where one twin was infected with cytomegalovirus (though showing no symptoms) and the other wasn't, around 60% of the immune factors measured showed a difference. Overall, it appeared that nuture (environment and other non-hereditary factors eg random) trumped nature (genes) in nearly 80% of immune factors measured.
The idea of this study was to establish a robust baseline for what a healthy immune system looks like, as a benchmark for measuring problems in sick patients. It looks like nailing down what a healthy immune system looks like won't be easy. This could explain why trying to tease out differences in the immune system between patients and healthy controls has proved so hard in mecfs, as well as in other illnesses.
(* I suspect @Jonathan Edwards would argue stochastic (random) factors play a part too). [edit: correction: the paper itself doesn't argue for only environmental factors]
here's Mark Davis's original paper in the prestigious journal Cell - nice abstract in pictures:
Variation in the Human Immune System Is Largely Driven by Non-Heritable Influences: Cell
The Chicken or the Egg? Stanford Study Suggests Immune Problems are Made Not Born - Health Rising
Normally identical twins look pretty-much the same biologicaly as they have the same set of genes as well as growing up (and in the womb) in very similar environments. But Mark Davis showed this doesn't apply to their immune systems which appear to be very sensitive to their particular environment* and history. For example, where one twin was infected with cytomegalovirus (though showing no symptoms) and the other wasn't, around 60% of the immune factors measured showed a difference. Overall, it appeared that nuture (environment and other non-hereditary factors eg random) trumped nature (genes) in nearly 80% of immune factors measured.
The idea of this study was to establish a robust baseline for what a healthy immune system looks like, as a benchmark for measuring problems in sick patients. It looks like nailing down what a healthy immune system looks like won't be easy. This could explain why trying to tease out differences in the immune system between patients and healthy controls has proved so hard in mecfs, as well as in other illnesses.
here's Mark Davis's original paper in the prestigious journal Cell - nice abstract in pictures:
Variation in the Human Immune System Is Largely Driven by Non-Heritable Influences: Cell
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