Dr William Weir has just sent me his short appraisal of his visit to the Mulheim clinic.
He has given me permission to share it with you.
SHORT APPRAISAL OF MY VISIT TO MULHEIM TO MEET DR BEATE JAEGER AND HER TEAM – Dr William Weir
One of the ongoing issues with ME/CFS is what causes the pathology underlying the symptoms of the disease. It is axiomatic that without a recognisable cause, effective treatment for any disease is not possible. During my visit to Mulheim I realised that Dr Jaeger and her impressive team had identified one of the major pathological components of ME/CFS. I was very encouraged by what I saw and more than impressed by Dr Jaeger. Her intelligence and humanity were qualities she had in abundance, particularly her ability to think "outside the box". Her initial interest had started with Long Covid, particularly in relation to the tendency for Long Covid patients to develop blood clots. There was therefore a possibility that such blood clots were obstructing blood flow in the finer blood vessels of the body, namely the capillaries. Reduced capillary blood flow has long been suspected as the cause of many of the features of ME/CFS and the same would appear to be the case with Long Covid. Furthermore radiological studies done some years ago in ME/CFS patients had shown evidence of reduced blood flow, particularly involving the brain stem (the part of the brain which governs most of the subconscious functions of the body such as blood pressure, heart and respiration rate). Logic therefore dictated that these “micro blood clots” should be removed, also that Long Covid and ME/CFS had a lot in common. Dr Jaeger was also applying a treatment with which she was already familiar, namely HELP apheresis. This treatment has been used since the 1980s to remove excessive levels of lipid from the blood of patients with coronary artery disease. Dr Jaeger therefore decided that this could be adapted to remove microclots from the circulation of Long Covid patients, by a sophisticated process of filtration. The technique involves continuous removal of blood from one arm vein whence it is filtered, before being returned to the opposite arm. So far this approach has been very successful, and she is now beginning to treat ME/CFS patients successfully as well, indicating that it is very likely that Long Covid and ME/CFS have very similar underlying pathology. This said, there may be subcategories of ME/CFS in which it is not microclots which are causing the capillary obstruction, but other forms of cellular debris including lipid globules.
Dr Jaeger’s approach was not simply empirical. When I was visiting there was also a laboratory team from South Africa, and a scientist from the Max Planck institute, whose main aim was to identify the nature of the debris filtered from the blood of patients under treatment. The South African team were able to demonstrate the presence of much circulating debris, comprised mainly of microscopic clumps of fibrin, platelets and red blood cells, something not seen in normal healthy blood. Some patients needed as few as 2 sessions of apheresis, whilst others required up to 10 sessions for this debris to be filtered out of their blood. Clinical recovery in virtually all the Long Covid cases was substantial, as was the case with the smaller number of fully treated ME/CFS patients treated to date.
The acid test of Dr Jaeger’s work will be to demonstrate not only subjective symptomatic improvement but also scientifically objective measures of improvement. Sophisticated scanning techniques as well as the recovery of fingerprint patterns will help prove the effectiveness of her treatment. I am cautiously optimistic that, when Dr Jaeger’s results appear in the medical literature, HELP apheresis will then be adopted universally as standard treatment for ME/CFS and Long Covid. Time will tell and fingers crossed!
WRCW
