I think the involvement of heat shock proteins is an intelligent and interesting theory. Though with so many intelligent and interesting theories floating around, I have trouble getting too excited about any one of them@Valentijn
Could you comment in the following paper?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3468676/
Regarding the paper itself, it seems like a good review of the relevant literature. Though I'd have to read all of the sources to see how accurate and reliable it all is, and I simply don't have the time or energy currently.
But it certainly is plausible that an abnormal HSP reaction to illness allows ME to result from a variety of infectious triggers. The only major weakness with that theory is that it sounds like there has only been one small study directly looking at HSP levels in ME patients. But that study (Jammes 2009) did use a good version of Fukuda with required PEM, and looks pretty sound. The other studies are merely supportive/non-contradictory of the possibility of the involvement of HSPs, but could support other theories as well.
I also don't see any real speculation in that paper about what causes the abnormal HSP reaction in some people but not others. Presumably genetics could be one factor, and could be pretty easily explored. Others, such as environmental factors or additional infections would be trickier. And there needs to be an explanation for why an infection suddenly triggers disease in someone who has recovered normally from similar (and even known ME-triggering) infections in the past.
So I think it's an area which has a lot of potential, but it needs a fair bit of work as well. The results from the Jammes paper badly need replicating in a bigger group - it's been 5 years now, so where are they with that? Are Jammes et al or Hooper et al looking into any factors which could cause the underlying abnormal HSP response? Genetic aspects are getting pretty cheap and easy to explore.
I'll take a look in a bit, and respond to that separately. I'm presuming (hoping!) everything relevant is in the first post of this thread.Also could you give us your comments/corrections on this Thread and what do you think for the theory that Protein Misfolding is a key aspect -so i am not suggesting that it is the cause- of CFS?
I don't know enough about it at this point. I tend to dig into things pretty rigorously before trying anything, plus I'm a bit busy with several antibiotics currently.Would you be willing to give to the regimen a try at some point?
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