Sarvaiya: Investigation of the effects of vanilloids in chronic fatigue syndrome

[veganmua]

Forced swim model? Being exhausted an appropriate amount due to activity is not the same as ME/PEM. My heart breaks thinking of the torture those mice had to go through for yet more bad science. How do studies like this get funding?

 

[Woolie]

Yea, leave them poor rats alone, I say!

If its a hypothesis that can reasonably be tested with human participants (which it is), I don't feel you can justify animal abuse.

 

[valentinelynx]

Poor mice

Sorry to be picky. Rats are not mice. Pet peeve (I've had both pet rats and pet mice - rats are much more personable ).

Yes, it hurts to hear of them mistreated. How is this a model of CFS? I've not heard of any known, validated animal model of CFS. This sounds like a model of overtraining syndrome or something like that. ME/CFS is not known to be caused by prolonged physical exhaustion by overexertion. Although, swimming 10 minutes a day - is that that hard on rats? Anyway, it sounds like a stupid study with faulty basic assumptions in its design.

 

[Effi]

I was hoping the swimming rats were something cute like this:

But in fact it's something horrible like this:

 

[Hip]

Rats are not mice. Pet peeve (I've had both pet rats and pet mice - rats are much more personable

I bet you did not intend that as a pun!

 

[RogerBlack]

Yea, leave them poor rats alone, I say!

If its a hypothesis that can reasonably be tested with human participants (which it is), I don't feel you can justify animal abuse.

Rat or mice trials can be tens or hundreds of times cheaper than human ones.
Sometimes you simply can't do the human trial with the money.

In this particular case, their animal model of the disease seems very questionable.
An animal model (a good one) of CFS would be a hugely massive step towards a cure.

Animals should be respected and treated well - as much as is reasonably practicable.

The whole amount of animal suffering in CFS research has not added up to a day of the humans popuplations suffering.
I note that at the moment I have several lots of rat poison down.
I would like to be able to properly set kill traps, but I this has not proved effective.

 

[Woolie]

Rat or mice trials can be tens or hundreds of times cheaper than human ones.
Sometimes you simply can't do the human trial with the money.

That's only the case if you're talking about a full clinical trial. But this is exploratory research. You could test a small sample of humans quite cheaply, and even include a placebo control. Would not be definitive, of course, but in what sense is this rat research "definitive"? Also, its expensive to run an animal lab. Personnel, cost of animals, feed, facility, etc.

The whole amount of animal suffering in CFS research has not added up to a day of the humans popuplations suffering.

It hasn't added up to a day of relief for CFS patients either.

I'm okay with animal research when there is no alternative.

I'm also okay with your rat poison, that's a different set of considerations - its a matter of the lesser of the evils, not comparable to strategic exploitation of a species like in research (although I would like to see methods that are less painful for the animal). Generally, too, I'm more comfortable with killing outright than causing prolonged distress.

 

[valentinelynx]

I bet you did not intend that as a pun!

. . . you might lose that one...

 

[valentinelynx]

It hasn't added up to a day of relief for CFS patients either.

My thought exactly.

 

[taniaaust1]

Chronically fatigued mice would probably be better off than their human ME/CFS counterparts: they wouldn't have to put up with all that biopsychosocial crap that we do!

what!, I want to see Wessley and his cobuddies try to heal mice using CBT.

 

[Effi]

@taniaaust1 looks like it could work?

 

[taniaaust1]

On a serious note studies like this are bullshit seeing one cant diagnose ME/CFS on symptoms another can see!! and its not diagnosed in a testable way at all either. They cant diagnose humans without a human giving them details so how in earth can they diagnose rats with this? (and there is nothing to say an animal would develop CFS either from doing things to them which sometimes give us CFS).

These are fatigue or over training studies.. not studies in ME. They shouldnt be calling them CFS studies. I dont even understand how these get published as such when they cant prove a mice or rat has even CFS. (maybe these studies are PTSD studies on those rats, just imagine being forced to swim in a little bottle). How do the researches know they arent studying PTSD?

i want to know how you get a rat to meet the CCC definition.

i dont think we could accurately make people have ME let alone animals, at least till we know more about this illness to be able to test for it.

 

[Effi]

@taniaaust1 I was wondering the same thing. re: the forced swimming model - they are the model used for research into depression too, as well as other illnesses. So I'm not sure if it even says anything about anything. It looks pretty dodgy IMO.

 

[Woolie]

I was wondering the same thing. re: the forced swimming model - they are the model used for research into depression too, as well as other illnesses. So I'm not sure if it even says anything about anything. It looks pretty dodgy IMO.

Me too, Effi! I dunno about you, these animal models make assumptions about the causes and mechanisms of the illness we just can't make. Apart from the fact that no-one threw me into a closed pool and forced me to swim for my life for a prolonged period, I didn't even overexert just before my illness onset. It was just business as usual.

Imagine if anyone could get CFS by some serious overexertion - even coerced overexertion like this? It would be pretty crowded here by now.

 

[Effi]

@Woolie There are two methods: forced swimming, and hanging the rat up by the tail! Apart from extreme distress and maybe exhaustion following prolonged distress I don't know what they're expecting to achieve with these models. Animal torture is what it looks like to me... especially if nothing comes out of it!

 

[RogerBlack]

i want to know how you get a rat to meet the CCC definition.

If, without ongoing challenge, you can get:

1) Fatigue reducing activity level. (easily measurable - compare activity to unchallenged mice)
2) PEM - again - give them some physical exercise they would normally seek out for reward and see if you get PEM.
3) Sleep dysfunction - again easy.
4) Pain - more problematic.
5) Neurocognitive problems - problems in maze running, and interacting with others.
6) a) POTS, palor, nausea/IBS, urinary frequency
...
Many, or most of these seem measurable in mice.

Having said that - this is not the sort of trial you would want to use to develop a CFS model.

At the very least, you'd want to measure the above CCC criteria. Doing it without has no benefit at all, and the above mentioned animal welfare issues. Alternative measures - if salivary or mitochondrial dysfunction is found might also be useful - but only again if these are at least after the recovery from 'overtraining' type effects.

The above study would be _considerably_ better done in humans participating in extreme endurance events.
Which is a crappy model, but at least might be sort-of-relevant.

 

[Hip]

. . . you might lose that one...

In which case: it was a good pun.

 

[Hip]

1) Fatigue reducing activity level. (easily measurable - compare activity to unchallenged mice)
2) PEM - again - give them some physical exercise they would normally seek out for reward and see if you get PEM.
3) Sleep dysfunction - again easy.
4) Pain - more problematic.
5) Neurocognitive problems - problems in maze running, and interacting with others.
6) a) POTS, palor, nausea/IBS, urinary frequency
...
Many, or most of these seem measurable in mice.

Indeed, it would be relatively easy with your above-listed checks to see if the mouse model used conforms to a Canadian Consensus Criteria definition of ME/CFS.

However, I very much doubt that the this forced swim test model will create a genuine ME/CFS disease in mice. Forced swim is a quite a commonly used technique with mice; it's not specific to ME/CFS studies.


I think you really need to infect mice virally, setting up a chronic enterovirus infection in their stomach and muscle tissues, and perhaps brain tissues, as numerous studies have found in human ME/CFS patients.

It was actually in a mouse model that Prof Steven Tracy and Prof Nora Chapman discovered the existence of previously unknown type of chronic enterovirus infection, called a terminally-deleted (TD) enterovirus infection (aka: non-cytolytic enterovirus infection). For more info, see Prof Tracy's article: Human Enteroviruses and Chronic Infectious Disease.

Dr Chia, Tracy and Chapman believe this non-cytolytic enterovirus infection may be a major factor in ME/CFS. Dr Chia has found this non-cytolytic enterovirus in the tissues of ME/CFS patients.

So clearly mice are capable of hosting these non-cytolytic enterovirus infections, and thus could make a good models for studying the chronic enterovirus infections of ME/CFS, and the ME/CFS symptoms these enterovirus infections appear to produce.


Tracy and Chapman were studying non-cytolytic enterovirus infections of the heart muscle of mice, in their mouse model of myocarditis; but for ME/CFS purposes, we would probably want to infect the stomach and skeletal muscle tissues, and possibly the brain (since three human autopsies on deceased ME/CFS patients showed enterovirus infection in the brain tissues).

The type of mice that Tracy and Chapman used in their studies on non-cytolytic enteroviruses are NOD mice. This is a line of mice specially bred to study type 1 diabetes (enterovirus has been linked to type 1 diabetes, and in NOD mice, under the right conditions, enterovirus infection will trigger type 1 diabetes).

 

[Hip]

Animal torture is what it looks like to me... especially if nothing comes out of it!

There's no denying that these poor rodents may suffer in lab experiments.

But I always think that if us humans were really concerned about the plight of rats and mice, we would not keep cats as pets, because as most cat owners know, their cats will rather gratuitously hunt down and kill mice, rats and birds, and bring the dead creatures home to show their owners. My sister's cats bring home a creature they have killed once a week or so.

I think if I were a mouse or rat, I'd rather 10 minutes of forced swimming than what must be a pretty terrifying experience of being chased and killed by a cat.

And humans don't worry about putting rat poison down either, which also likely causes a painful death. Funny that you never hear anti-vivisectionists talk about such issues.

It's good and important to consider animal welfare in lab experiments, but I think it must be kept in context of the wider picture about how humans treat animals.

 

[valentinelynx]

@Woolie There are two methods: forced swimming, and hanging the rat up by the tail! Apart from extreme distress and maybe exhaustion following prolonged distress I don't know what they're expecting to achieve with these models. Animal torture is what it looks like to me... especially if nothing comes out of it!

Help. Please stop confusing rats and mice! You've got an illustration of a "mouse model of depression" and talk about hanging rats up by their tails! I wouldn't do this to either species, but they still are different species!