Hornig/Lipkin cytokine study out now - press release

W

worldbackwards

Senior Member
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Great timing whilst the IOM thing is still in the news!
concepcion said:
Reuters
Study on biology of chronic fatigue illness stirs debate
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/27/us-health-chronicfatigue-idUSKBN0LV2BH20150227
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Michael Sharpe, a professor of psychological medicine, at Britain's Oxford University said the finding was "potentially interesting" but added: "This type of study (a case-control study) is notorious for producing findings that other researchers subsequently fail to replicate."
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Or: "Release the hounds, Smithers"
 
G

greeneagledown

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Some thoughts:
- Interesting that they found lower cytokines in longer duration patients than in controls. When the preliminary data was first reported awhile ago, I thought they said that controls and longer duration patients had similar levels.
- Why isn't C-Reactive Protein and/or sed rate elevated in short-duration patients if they have so much cytokine inflammation? Makes me wonder if maybe these two tests don't measure inflammation as effectively as has traditionally been thought.
- Some interesting tie-ins (ties-in?) to B cell maturation, which might support the autoimmune theory being explored in Norway and the UK.
 
A.B.

A.B.

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This says more than words.
F1.large.jpg
 
Simon

Simon

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Planning to geek my way through the paper, but will drop at some point.

Sorry, we did try to have separate threads for the paper itself and news discussion but they got merged. So you'll have to put up with my tedious detail here.

General linear model (GLM) and t-test follow-up comparison of all ME/CFS cases (short and long duration combined, n = 298) with controls (n = 348) yielded few significant results, with cases showing lower levels for most analytes
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So this is a surprise: not much difference between cases and controls. There was a pattern of slightlly higher levels in patients than controls, but not much to shout about.

By contrast, the same statistical approach showed many significant differences between short and long duration patients, which is the key new finding of this study.
 
A.B.

A.B.

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Sushi said:
It is interesting that in all but a few of the markers the long term patients were lower than the controls. They mentioned avenues for early intervention when cytokines were high--what about the "after 3 year" group? Anyone see anything from them suggesting avenues of treatment?

Sushi
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They measured 51 cytokines, but figure 1 only shows 24. I'm guessing they're only showing the ones that are interesting.
 
Simon

Simon

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They also found different patterns between short and long duration patients

early ME/CFS cases had a prominent activation of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines as well as a dissociation of characteristic intercytokine regulatory networks
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Long duration patients were much like controls, with similar 'cytokine networks', and cytokines that were up in short duration patients were often down in long duration patients.
 
adreno

adreno

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Simon said:
So this is a surprise: not much difference between cases and controls. There was a pattern of slightlly higher levels in patients than controls, but not much to shout about.
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Not really a surprise, as the short duration (high cytokines) and long duration (low cytokines) cancel each other out when combined.

So between-group differences were small, whereas within-group differences were significant.
 
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