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Something in the blood (the ME/CFS effect?) Simon McGrath blog

Simon

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Something in the blood
blood-drop-social.jpg

It is remarkable that four independent groups have now found that a factor in the blood can affect cell metabolism/mitochondria in ME/CFS and transfer the effect to healthy cells. Here is a summary of the provisional findings.

Fluge & Mella
The first to find the effect were Dr Oystein Fluge and Professor Olav Mella in 2016. They were studying energy production in the cell, a logical thing to do when trying to understand an illness where energy is in such short supply.
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What they found was, surprisingly, that the muscle cells produced more lactic acid and burned more oxygen when they were incubated with ME/CFS serum than when incubated in serum from healthy controls. And the effect was particularly strong when the cells were made to work hard.
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> Also Ron Davis, Karl Morten, Bhupesh Prusty with their different approaches that also found an effect.

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So we have four groups finding that a factor in ME/CFS blood that has an effect on cells. These are still early days: only one study has been published so far, the sample sizes are relatively small and the findings need to be confirmed. But if things pan out, this development could prove to be an important step in understanding the biology of at least some types of ME/CFS.

Read the full blog
 
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