Aside from being an interesting, if slightly ghoulish, read in this week's New Scientist, there is an ME/CFS link. Before I get to that, some pretty major caveats:
So, with those caveats/major red flags in mind, there was one bit that caught my eye (emphasis mine):
As far as I can tell, the blood transfusion is actually an infusion of blood plasma. Therefore - with all the methodological problems / other issues aside - this would be the third group that seems to find that something in blood plasma may be linked to ME/CFS. IIRC, Fluge/Mella and Davis have both reported in vitro findings that ME/CFS patients' plasma seems to impede cellular metabolism in healthy cells, and that ME/CFS patients' cellular metabolism ceases to be impaired if placed into healthy controls' plasma.
Given all the problems highlighted, it would be entirely wrong to suggest this is the first confirmation of these findings in vivo (Did the patient in question really have CFS? Did they really recover? Was this placebo effect?). However, I still thought it might be of interest given that it seems to be consistent with the current research focus on blood plasma in ME/CFS.
...plus the article's a pretty good read anyway. Increasingly I find a lot of the 'innovation' in Silicon Valley to be pretty dystopian, and if the rich paying for the blood of the young isn't dystopian I don't know what is...
- The article is (fairly, in view) pretty sceptical of the claims being made by this clinic and questions whether they are being truly accurate in claiming few side effects / bad reactions;
Not that any of this should be taken at face value. Many of Ambrosia’s claimed improvements could be down to the placebo effect.
I am astonished that my visit has coincided with the first complication of the treatment. There’s an uncomfortable silence as JR and Wright exchange glances. “It’s not the first one,” says Wright. When I press him for more information, he demurs. “You’ll have to talk to Jesse.”
- Despite calling it a trial, what the clinic is offering cannot really be called that.
The methodology falls short of the normal standards of scientific rigour, so it’s unsurprising that scientists and ethicists have accused Karmazin’s team of taking advantage of public excitement around the idea.”I don’t think the Ambrosia trial can be called a trial at all, since they treat healthy people and they have no clear read-outs,” Wyss-Coray says
- Indeed, the 'findings' so far were announced at software coding conference, not in a medical journal.
This makes any findings virtually unpublishable, which may explain why Karmazin announced his first results to a room full of technologists at the Silicon Valley Code Conference in May instead of at a medical conference or in a journal. The numbers were as unverifiable as they were impressive.
So, with those caveats/major red flags in mind, there was one bit that caught my eye (emphasis mine):
Karmazin says this could explain his observations during the trial: a woman with chronic fatigue syndrome is now able to get out of bed and live normally;
As far as I can tell, the blood transfusion is actually an infusion of blood plasma. Therefore - with all the methodological problems / other issues aside - this would be the third group that seems to find that something in blood plasma may be linked to ME/CFS. IIRC, Fluge/Mella and Davis have both reported in vitro findings that ME/CFS patients' plasma seems to impede cellular metabolism in healthy cells, and that ME/CFS patients' cellular metabolism ceases to be impaired if placed into healthy controls' plasma.
Given all the problems highlighted, it would be entirely wrong to suggest this is the first confirmation of these findings in vivo (Did the patient in question really have CFS? Did they really recover? Was this placebo effect?). However, I still thought it might be of interest given that it seems to be consistent with the current research focus on blood plasma in ME/CFS.
...plus the article's a pretty good read anyway. Increasingly I find a lot of the 'innovation' in Silicon Valley to be pretty dystopian, and if the rich paying for the blood of the young isn't dystopian I don't know what is...