oThe first cerebrospinal fluid study using Dr. Peterson’s carefully collated samples found a similar pattern of immune system down regulation. That study (supported by CFI and Evans Foundation) included only longer duration patients. These two studies – the first to find similar issues in these two different compartments of the body – suggested that the immune system had taken a system wide punch to the gut.
What could cause this kind of immune exhaustion? Dr. Hornig stated it’s usually associated with chronic infections.
Noting that similar differences have been found in autoimmune diseases, Dr. Hornig proposed that an autoimmune process may be fueling the symptoms in a subset of patients.
[my bolding]
How does this fit with the strongly held belief of some members that ME is only an autoimmune disease, and that immune down-regulation and chronic infections do not exist in ME?
Virtually all the immune factors tested were higher in the complex atypical vs the classical patients.
I don't quite follow this sentence. Is
@Cort saying that classical patients have more immune down-regulation while complex atypical patients have higher (more normal?) levels of the measured immune factors? Or that complex atypical patients have immune up-regulation? Or something else entirely?
Here's another sentence I'm having trouble following:
Similarly, without excluding Peterson’s subset of atypical patients, the cerebral spinal fluid study findings would have been insignificant.
How so? Does this mean the the immune dysregulation in atypical patients is less clear, or nonexistent, or in the opposite direction to the immune dysregulation in classical patients?
Does this suggest that the group Dr. Peterson is calling complex atypical may have an autoimmune disease, while those he calls classical have chronic infection leading to immune down-regulation? Two subsets, or even two entirely separate diseases? It seems like it's looking less like different stages of the same illness, although that's not entirely clear to me based on this article.