Immunologist Derya Unutmaz, MD, who heads the NIH-funded Jackson Laboratory, has found immune system disturbances in deidentified cell samples from patients with ME/CFS, particularly in CD8 cells and T-helper 17 cells, which are involved in tissue inflammation.
While emphasizing that the precise relevance of the findings is not yet clear, Unutmaz told
Medscape Medical News, "There are some really major perturbations.... When I look at the data, there's something biologically terribly wrong with these people. I studied
HIV for many years. This is the type of thing you would see in HIV-infected people."
A graduate student of Hanson's, Alex Maldonaro, presented data from their laboratory showing that in cytotoxic CD8 T cells from patients with ME/CFS, metabolism is diminished compared with healthy T cells when stimulated. She said they hope to investigate how that deficiency affects immune function, as well as other metabolic pathways to better understand the disease mechanism.
Long-time ME/CFS researcher W. Ian Lipkin, MD, of Columbia University, presented data from that center's deep dive into bacteriomic, viromic, metabolomic, and epigenetic analyses. In examining the microbiology, for example, a notable finding was that in fecal samples from patients with ME/CFS, levels of bacteria that produce butyrate are reduced. Butyrate is important for controlling immune system function and apoptosis.
Other findings presented at the meeting included preliminary data from Jonas Bergquist, PhD, professor of pathology at Uppsala University, Sweden, demonstrating significantly elevated levels of neuroinflammatory biomarkers in cerebrospinal fluid of ME/CFS patients. In addition, whole-brain magnetic resonance spectroscopy data from Jarred W. Younger, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, revealed metabolite and temperature
abnormalities in several brain regions of ME/CFS patients.
Virologist Jose G. Montoya, MD, professor of medicine at Stanford University, California, presented the latest in his long-standing work on cytokine networks in ME/CFS and their associations with disease symptoms and severity. He has recently found correlations with HLA genetic susceptibility regions that are also linked to autoimmune conditions, including
Hashimoto thyroiditis and
primary biliary cirrhosis.
"ME/CFS is now an unfolding story of scientific discoveries that will result in targeted treatments for what appears to be a chronic, incapacitating inflammatory syndrome. The data from various groups are pointing in this direction," Montoya said.
