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Why ME/CFS is NOT an appropriate name

Forbin

Senior Member
Messages
966
A standard spinal tap test for total protein and cell count is not going to reveal if you have the anomalous proteins that Baraniuk's study reported.*

* http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2377/5/22

The study above, and a 2011 study by Schutzer et al. that was able to differentiate between "CFS," Lyme Disease and controls*, used mass spectrometry to identify these proteins. This is an extremely expensive and specialized research tool and is not a test that your doctor can order. In other words, a standard spinal test is not going to tell you if you have the proteins associated with low-grade inflammation.

* http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0017287

However, as reported by Natelson et al. in 2004*, some 30% of patients with "CFS" showed somewhat out of range protein levels and/or elevated cell counts. But these levels were far, far below the levels typically associated with active encephalitis (which is often lethal), so one's physician might not consider the slightly unusual results significant.

* http://cvi.asm.org/content/12/1/52.full

I don't believe it is known whether there is a relationship between the relatively modest out or range protein levels found in the Natelson study and the anomalous proteins found by mass spectrometry in the studies by Baraniuk and Schutzer

At any rate, just to reiterate, a typical spinal tap result is not going to reveal the proteins found in the 2005 study by Baraniuk.