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Jarred Younger does a webinar with more updates

bertiedog

Senior Member
Messages
1,738
Location
South East England, UK
It was one of the best webinars I have listened to, really good explanations of how certain areas of the brain light up using an adapted MRI machine. His study was a small one, only 15 ME patients versus 15 women aged around 40, all women. He had described the study as the brain on fire.

He found that certain chemicals were elevated in the patients with ME. They were choline which he said can indicate rapid cell turnover which shouldn't be happening. None of the controls showed this elevated choline.

Another elevated chemical was lactate which he said usually you wouldn't see this in the brain, none of the controls had this. Elevated lactate levels also showed increased cell turnover in the brain and in the ME patients was 4 times higher than in the controls. I think he said that running out of oxygen or exceeding your ability to make oxygen could cause this neuroinflammation.

The fascinating thing about the research was that the areas that lit up were ones like the hippocampus, cerebellum, insular and a few others I didn't get to write down. All these were involved in what Jarred called the sickness response causing the same sort of symptoms you get when you have flu. Things like malaise, headaches, muscle pains, depression, anxiety, balance issues and of course pain and several others I didn't write down but all of them can be experienced by sufferers of ME.

A couple of other brain chemicals myo-inositol and N-acetylaspartate showed no difference in levels in ME patients v controls but he said this was a good thing because he thought it meant there wasn't permanent brain damage unlike some other neurological diseases like Parkinsons, MS, Alzheimers. N-acetylaspartate would be at a high level as a sign of a healthy brain.

He stressed the whole picture involved neuroinflammation and when looking for treatments it would probably involve anti-inflammatories that could cross the blood brain barrier. So far there were none that he knew of. LDN was mentioned but he said it wasn't perfect because it suppressed neutrons as well as the glial cells whereas we needed just the microglial cells turned off.

He also mentioned some herbals like curcumin or boswellia might be helpful but he was doing a blinded study at present to see if they would work to calm the neuroinflammation.

One method that might be helpful he described as brain cooling but so far there were only invasive ways of doing this although he said that now there was a vagus nerve stimulator that could be trialled.

There were some good questions but I had better stop as I have a migraine developing.

Pam
 
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Research 1st

Severe ME, POTS & MCAS.
Messages
768
A couple of other brain chemicals weren't elevated, myo-inositol and N-acetylaspartate but he said this was a good thing...

Pam

Excellent write up, thank you.
Two small corrections that are worth editing though in my view.

NAA is reduced or absent in brain damage not high.

Myo-Inositol is raised as a glial inflammatory marker, so in ME it should be raised not normal.

One thing worth remembering, is because CFS is diagnosed without testing using exclusionary (negative) tests for other conditions to guess we have CFS, then when we pop ourselves under a scanner, results won't be consistent.

Really we urgently need a diagnostic test, then repeat Jarred Younger, Nakatomi FDG-PET inflammation study etc and the inflammation findings will be far more impressive.
 

Sushi

Moderation Resource Albuquerque
Messages
19,935
Location
Albuquerque
He stressed the whole picture involved neuroinflammation and when looking for treatments it would probably involve anti-inflammatories that could cross the blood brain barrier. So far there were none that he knew of.
Some of us have found medical cannabis to be very helpful in dealing with symptoms. I did some quick online research and apparently it is both an anti-inflammatory and able to cross the blood-brain barrier. It would be so nice if there weren't restrictions on researching it.
 

jesse's mom

Senior Member
Messages
6,795
Location
Alabama USA
That guy is in my state! Just a 5 hour drive! I am so excited about his research. I messaged his group to let me know if they need more affected brains. Count me in, my brain is definitely affected!

I also love the way he talks, just normal... no science jargon that goes beyond a non science background. He speaks plainly and with compassion for patients!
 

Belbyr

Senior Member
Messages
602
Location
Memphis
That guy is in my state! Just a 5 hour drive! I am so excited about his research. I messaged his group to let me know if they need more affected brains. Count me in, my brain is definitely affected!

I also love the way he talks, just normal... no science jargon that goes beyond a non science background. He speaks plainly and with compassion for patients!

Over time I have learned to like him too. At first I thought he might have been just lone researcher that might not amount to much, then he starts dropping bombshells all of the sudden. It could be him that gets CFS a lot more funding.
 

nandixon

Senior Member
Messages
1,092
He stressed the whole picture involved neuroinflammation and when looking for treatments it would probably involve anti-inflammatories that could cross the blood brain barrier. So far there were none that he knew of.
I haven't watched the video yet but I'm surprised he said that because he's definitely aware of the “antibiotic” minocycline, which I've seen him mention before a few years ago (see here).

Minocycline easily crosses the blood-brain barrier, is a potent anti-inflammatory, and can be taken long term. See, e.g., this 2013 review:

These findings specifically concern to minocycline as it has recently been found to have multiple non-antibiotic biological effects that are beneficial in experimental models of various diseases with an inflammatory basis, including dermatitis, periodontitis, atherosclerosis and autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. Of note, minocycline has also emerged as the most effective tetracycline derivative at providing neuroprotection.

Minocycline: far beyond an antibiotic


(I'm not sure what the current findings/applications regarding minocycline are.)

I believe some ME/CFS patients have found long-term use of minocycline helpful.

I wonder if Dr Younger has looked at minocycline and decided it wasn't a good fit for one reason or another?
 

bertiedog

Senior Member
Messages
1,738
Location
South East England, UK
There were several questions at the end of the presentation -

Jarred stressed again that once there is inflammation in the brain it can affect anywhere in the body so there could be quite a range just as experienced with a bad bout of flu - sleep, pain, motivation, fatigue, hypersensitivity, malaise etc.

There was a question regarding whether a retrovirus could cause this and he answered that it could do but also that many events might trigger the illness, virus, mold, fungi, bacteria etc.

He said it will be different for everyone. The specialist scan that he uses will show chemicals in the brain that were being produced just minutes before entering the scanner and it is possible that if he was to rescan several days later when the ME patient might be feeling better that the scan could look different, he doesn't know yet.

He felts this ability to scan the brain with his new technique should change everything and it could be used with other illnesses like epilepsy to see exactly what is going on. He has been approached by other researchers as to the necessary adjustments that had to be made in order to carry out this type of scanning.

He was asked whether he shared his knowledge and he answered that he was happy to do this and already he had several clinicians who were also scientists who have asked him for more information and he felt this was very positive because they treat patients as well as doing research.

His paper is due to be published very soon.

So far he has only been working with ME patients who are mild or moderately affected, around 50-60% on the disability scale but he said either that he hoped to work with the more severely affected patients soon so he can then compare results or that he is already conducting a study with the more severely affected patient. Sorry I am not quite sure which one of these is correct but he is definitely aware that this is what is needed.

He was also asked how physical exertion reflected on the brain scans but he hasn't done a study on this yet but thinks that it could be done in the future.

With regard to physical exertion, in inflammatory states he felt it was impossible to actually do this to any great extent because it would be impossible. There was a possibility that microglial cells might be interpreting signals from the body (beta endorphins) in a way that was aggravating the microglial cells. This was a possibility but he hadn't tested this theory yet. He also mentioned that cortisol could be involved.

Lastly he mentioned that he was going to collaborate with other scientists who were specialists in genotyping because he felt this might be important and he had very little knowledge in this area.

I hope that the above is correct but I am happy to edit any of the above if I have got it wrong!

Pam
 

lilpink

Senior Member
Messages
988
Location
UK
I hope this link works since it was done on a facebook group. I would say about 75% of it is repeat from the OMF conference, but there was some interesting things said about some findings on bringing neuro inflammation down. Some of the questions asked were good ones too.

https://www.facebook.com/SolveMECFSInitiative/?__tn__=,dkC-R&eid=ARCaElmS7yYBndy_x7j9F8_iUEtHnpda9ITmTstzSOQLFO6_KP_DD8zQ7hmXbjJm2axNvVPU9lhF2ahL&hc_ref=ARQ02id8ORHbxGNbbNM5_X6Q20l20d77RbMr8jye4S8zpADk8UiqzcA167X8MI8Q6yQ
Has it been uploaded to You Tube I wonder? I can more easily cope with it via that portal as I can access via TV and thus be horizontal etc and so on...
 

pibee

Senior Member
Messages
304
It was one of the best webinars I have listened to, really good explanations of how certain areas of the brain light up using an adapted MRI machine. His study was a small one, only 15 ME patients versus 15 women aged around 40, all women. He had described the study as the brain on fire.

He found that certain chemicals were elevated in the patients with ME. They were choline which he said can indicate rapid cell turnover which shouldn't be happening. None of the controls showed this elevated choline.

Another elevated chemical was lactate which he said usually you wouldn't see this in the brain, none of the controls had this. Elevated lactate levels also showed increased cell turnover in the brain and in the ME patients was 4 times higher than in the controls. I think he said that running out of oxygen or exceeding your ability to make oxygen could cause this neuroinflammation.

The fascinating thing about the research was that the areas that lit up were ones like the hippocampus, cerebellum, insular and a few others I didn't get to write down. All these were involved in what Jarred called the sickness response causing the same sort of symptoms you get when you have flu. Things like malaise, headaches, muscle pains, depression, anxiety, balance issues and of course pain and several others I didn't write down but all of them can be experienced by sufferers of ME.

A couple of other brain chemicals myo-inositol and N-acetylaspartate showed no difference in levels in ME patients v controls but he said this was a good thing because he thought it meant there wasn't permanent brain damage unlike some other neurological diseases like Parkinsons, MS, Alzheimers. N-acetylaspartate would be at a high level as a sign of a healthy brain.

He stressed the whole picture involved neuroinflammation and when looking for treatments it would probably involve anti-inflammatories that could cross the blood brain barrier. So far there were none that he knew of. LDN was mentioned but he said it wasn't perfect because it suppressed neutrons as well as the glial cells whereas we needed just the microglial cells turned off.

He also mentioned some herbals like curcumin or boswellia might be helpful but he was doing a blinded study at present to see if they would work to calm the neuroinflammation.

One method that might be helpful he described as brain cooling but so far there were only invasive ways of doing this although he said that now there was a vagus nerve stimulator that could be trialled.

There were some good questions but I had better stop as I have a migraine developing.

Pam

Thanks for the summary!

Do you know by any chance if regular MRI spectroscopy is useful to see choline and lactate levels? Because from what I hear he is using some unique technique and MRI spectroscopy is widely availabbe, I think.
 

raghav

Senior Member
Messages
809
Location
India
BTW has anybody tried montelukast for brain inflammation. It is supposed to be very effective in rats in calming the microglia.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4639806/

A 6 week (not 4 months) trial on rats which had issues with the microglia became completely normal. It apparently crosses the blood brain barrier. I wonder if Jarrey Younger is aware of this. He must be. I am also interested in the herbal cocktail he is researching on for calming the microglia. It would be nice if he mentions what it is.
 
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ljimbo423

Senior Member
Messages
4,705
Location
United States, New Hampshire
I have been trying to understand the significant improvement some with ME/CFS get with high dose Thiamine, Coq10, Dichloroacetate (DCA) and Alpha lipoic acid. All of which improve mitochondrial function.

With Jarred Youngers' hypothesis that it's brain inflammation causing most or all of the symptoms in ME/CFS. I just did a quick search and it looks like ALL of these things cross the blood brain barrier (BBB)!

I was thinking they were only affecting the mitochondria in the body but it looks like they also cross the BBB.

So it might be that the improvement people are getting from these substances, are from improving mitochondrial function in the brain, not the body.
 

Vojta

Senior Member
Messages
167
Location
Czech Republic
BTW has anybody tried montelukast for brain inflammation. It is supposed to be very effective in rats in calming the microglia.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4639806/

A 6 week (not 4 months) trial on rats which had issues with the microglia became completely normal. It apparently crosses the blood brain barrier. I wonder if Jarrey Younger is aware of this. He must be. I am also interested in the herbal cocktail he is researching on for calming the microglia. It would be nice if he mentions what it is.

I tried Montelukast for MCAS for few months and I have a lot of neuroinflammation. It didn't help for either. Maybe it does to other people. I had no reaction at all. But later other MCAS inhibitor, Cromolyn, improved MCAS and my neuro symptoms. I'm trying to get enough to up my doses. I hope Dr. Younger is looking into this connection of Mast cells and neuroinflammation.