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Dr Amolak Bansal & Jorgen Jelstad TV interview at ME conference/Dr Bansal's research

deleder2k

Senior Member
Messages
1,129
Jørgen Jelstad says that doctors and health personell lacks knowledge about the disease. He also says that several doctors from Norway and abroad are participating. He then tells about the fact that many with ME are misbelieved by society. "Times are changing. People are starting to take this disease seriously". The reporter then asks him about his mother who is sick with ME.
 
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mango

Senior Member
Messages
905
"You've done a lot of research on ME. What is the main challenge in both recognising ME and treating it?"

Bansal: "The main challenge at the moment is trying to get everyone to appreciate the seriousness of the condition, and to recognise that this is not just a psychological problem.

There's a lot of misinformation amongst lay people and medical people that ME is a condition caused by psychological problems, but this is not the case. As in most illnesses it's a mixture of organic problems and when those problems become very very chronic then of course stress and other factors can come in.

But in terms of what causes ME, this is a very difficult question to answer, because I suspect that there are multiple causes including viral infections, including problems with the endocrine system, and our own work is looking at cortisol, which is secreted by the adrenal gland and is the main stress hormone.

And what it seems to be showing is that people don't respond to their own stress hormones, which compounds the whole problem, which causes further immune disturbance and which causes many of the symptoms in ME such as the weakness and feeling faint and the poor memory and concentration."
 

halcyon

Senior Member
Messages
2,482
That stress hormone thing was a new one on me.

Is that new?
I would have to guess that he's talking about his own unpublished work because I see nothing from him on Pubmed on the subject. The way he is describing it also sounds counter to what has been found before regarding cortisol in this disease.
 

Sasha

Fine, thank you
Messages
17,863
Location
UK
What is he talking about? Glucocorticoid resistance?

I don't know - it sounds from the "feeling faint" thing that he's talking about orthostatic intolerance being one of the problems resulting from it, whatever it is.
 

Daisymay

Senior Member
Messages
754
I seem to remember him talking about this stress hormone problem in a video about a year or so ago, sorry I can't remember where, it may have been 2014 IiME but maybe not. But he was certainly talking of on going research into this and how it could fit many of the symptoms. My memory of it is that it wasn't a problem with not producing enough stress hormone it was that cells weren't responding normally to the hormones which had a similar effect to being low in stress hormones, please remember my memory may well be wrong!
 

Daisymay

Senior Member
Messages
754
Just seen this form earlier this year, I'll look for the video I saw:


http://sussexliving.com/remember-news/

REMEMBER THE NEWS!

March 28, 2015 · posted by Robert Veitch · in Charity, Community, Hassocks, Hurstpierpoint
Money For Research

reMEmber, the Hurstpierpont/ Hassocks based charity, has raised £5,000 to help ground-breaking research into the exact cause of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). reMEmber’s patron, Sir Nicholas Soames MP, met Dr Amolak Bansal and presented him with reMEmber’s cheque on the 20th February 2015. Dr Bansal, consultant immunologist at St Helier Hospital in Surrey, is a leading expert on this illness and heads up a number of important research projects. reMEmber’s donation will go towards his study of peripheral resistance to the stress hormone, cortisol, in people with ME and whether this leads to the disordered immune system from which they suffer. One person in every 200 has ME, and some (including some children) are badly disabled by it. There is no cure yet but good research like Dr Bansal’s will lead the way to it.
 

FTY

Messages
75
Yep, he's been looking at end organ unresponsiveness to cortisol for a while, glad to hear there's been some funding towards this. Explains why our symptoms are so similar to Addison's.
 

FTY

Messages
75
I'm loving the line 'There is no cure yet but good research like Dr Bansal’s will lead the way to it.' Simple as that! Let's hope so! Actually I do think it's true, just might take a while.
 

FTY

Messages
75
I have watched his webinar and i must say i am very impressed by his presentation and ideas! I think his hypthesis is the best i have ever seen on the ME/CFS puzzle :)
I agree - his ideas give me hope, a quiet but realistic hope I think. His theory seems to draw together lots of different factors and he has a very sensible approach. He doesn't think that it's going to be any one thing (rituximab, anti-virals etc) but a combination of many and I think that is the most likely conclusion. The cortisol connection is fascinating and makes a lot of sense. I think it'll be a long slow process of increasing understanding but better this than to keep grasping on to things that promise a cure and ending up being disappointed. Very glad that Dr Bansal is working on this he seems to be a voice of reason. I wish there was a way that we could ramp up the speed of research like this ...
 

alex3619

Senior Member
Messages
13,810
Location
Logan, Queensland, Australia
That stress hormone thing was a new one on me.

Is that new?
Cortisol claims go back to the 80s. This refers to something else. I think it was Bansal who discussed this a few years back. This is more relevent:

reMEmber’s donation will go towards his study of peripheral resistance to the stress hormone, cortisol, in people with ME and whether this leads to the disordered immune system from which they suffer.

The issue here is we have cells with lots of the inactive binding receptor, which inhibits a cortisol response. It is, I think, the beta cortisol receptor. So we might make cortisol but it does not work, a lot like people with thyroid resistance might have seemingly normal thyroid ranges, and people with insulin resistance can have seemingly normal insulin. Yet it may not be all tissues that are resistant, so simply giving cortisol might cause a correction but possibly also a hyper-cortisol response, including immune suppression. It needs to be fixed on the side of the response receptor, not the hormone.

I have alluded to this research a few times, I hope we see some good science published on this in the future.
 

Gijs

Senior Member
Messages
690
Cortisol claims go back to the 80s. This refers to something else. I think it was Bansal who discussed this a few years back. This is more relevent:



The issue here is we have cells with lots of the inactive binding receptor, which inhibits a cortisol response. It is, I think, the beta cortisol receptor. So we might make cortisol but it does not work, a lot like people with thyroid resistance might have seemingly normal thyroid ranges, and people with insulin resistance can have seemingly normal insulin. Yet it may not be all tissues that are resistant, so simply giving cortisol might cause a correction but possibly also a hyper-cortisol response, including immune suppression. It needs to be fixed on the side of the response receptor, not the hormone.

I have alluded to this research a few times, I hope we see some good science published on this in the future.
I agree with you but Bansal was talking about alpha not Beta glucocorticoïd resistance if i was correct. Many receptor issues in ME/CFS/POTS have been found. Could it be that an infection (EBV?) mess up the B cells and make auto antibodies against these receptors as a cause of the whole disease?