This year’s conference of the International Association for CFS/ME (IACFS/ME) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on 27–30 October will include speeches by Dr. Walter Koroshetz and Dr. Øystein Fluge.
Dr Koroshetz, who is Director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and head of the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group, will give the conference’s keynote address. He is involved in creating the National Institutes of Health’s planned intramural, biomedical study on ME/CFS.
Dr Fluge, with his colleague Dr Olav Mella, is based at Haukeland University Hospital at the University of Bergen, Norway. They are responsible for the groundbreaking randomised, placebo-controlled trial of the immune-therapy drug rituximab for ME/CFS, which was published in 2011, and the current large follow-up multi-centre study. They are also conducting several substudies on ME/CFS patients, looking at possible problems in the endothelium (the cells that line blood vessels); gastrointestinal functioning; and the genetics of families who have close relatives with the disease.
IACFS/ME has held its research and clinical conferences approximately every two years since 1996. The theme of the 2016 conference is “emerging science and clinical care” and it includes lectures tailored for patients and their supporters.
The Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine at Nova Southeastern University, based in Fort Lauderdale, will host a pre-conference day of talks on October 26.
Registration information and a programme will be available nearer to the conference date.