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https://www.emerge.org.au/Blog/mikemusker
Researcher Interview: Mike Musker
By Jason Murphy
Meet Mike Musker. A former mental health nurse who took the path less travelled, Musker, is now a scientist with some excellent research underway.
He works with the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and his research – including one major project near completion and another about to start - is definitively biological in approach. The nearly-finished study looked at 23 ME/CFS cases versus 12 controls, and sampled their blood in a very unusual way.
“We wanted to look at what’s happening in people’s blood in relation to ME/CFS,” Musker says. “Looking for biological causes, the biological basis of it.”
The sampling process was intensive. Patients were invited into the lab in the morning and seated in an enormous luxury recliner where they could read, snooze, and watch TV for eight hours. During that period, their blood was taken repeatedly, using a machine called an Edwards VAMP. The rarely-used but highly-promising device permits frequent blood tests without draining a patient completely, by returning blood that would otherwise be wasted to the patient after the sample is drawn. Each sample is just four milliliters.
“I placed a cannula in their arms at 9am and we took the first sample at 9am and we took a sample every seven minutes until 5pm. That was 69 samples across the day. We were then able to see the differences in the cytokines across the day.”
continues at the link!
https://www.emerge.org.au/Blog/mikemusker
Researcher Interview: Mike Musker
By Jason Murphy
Meet Mike Musker. A former mental health nurse who took the path less travelled, Musker, is now a scientist with some excellent research underway.
He works with the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and his research – including one major project near completion and another about to start - is definitively biological in approach. The nearly-finished study looked at 23 ME/CFS cases versus 12 controls, and sampled their blood in a very unusual way.
“We wanted to look at what’s happening in people’s blood in relation to ME/CFS,” Musker says. “Looking for biological causes, the biological basis of it.”
The sampling process was intensive. Patients were invited into the lab in the morning and seated in an enormous luxury recliner where they could read, snooze, and watch TV for eight hours. During that period, their blood was taken repeatedly, using a machine called an Edwards VAMP. The rarely-used but highly-promising device permits frequent blood tests without draining a patient completely, by returning blood that would otherwise be wasted to the patient after the sample is drawn. Each sample is just four milliliters.
“I placed a cannula in their arms at 9am and we took the first sample at 9am and we took a sample every seven minutes until 5pm. That was 69 samples across the day. We were then able to see the differences in the cytokines across the day.”
continues at the link!
https://www.emerge.org.au/Blog/mikemusker