Basic research and drug trials under discussion at the NIH In October, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced it was stepping up its commitment to ME/CFS and would be expanding its intramural and extramural research programs. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, told Science that his colleagues were “determined to move pretty fast on this.”
The NIH is changing how it decides to fund research. Will it benefit ME/CFS?
In a budget agreement announced early Wednesday morning, funding for the US Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) ME/CFS program was restored to the full $5.4 million. The omnibus budget bill is expected to pass both houses on Friday. CDC funding for ME/CFS had previously been cut to $0 in the proposed 2016 budget. [pullquote align=”right” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=””
Professor James Coyne’s request for the dataset used for a paper about the PACE trial in the journal PLOS ONE was rejected on Friday as “vexatious”. King’s College London (KCL), acting for the PACE authors, wrote to Professor Coyne that they considered that there was “a lack of value or serious purpose to [his] request”,
A new study has found that two human herpesviruses: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), previously only proven to infect B cells, can also infect neurons. For years there has been indirect evidence that gammaherpesviruses like EBV and KSHV could infect nervous tissue. For example, EBV viruses have been found in the cerebrospinal fluid and brain tissue
Norwegian researchers say patients with ME have more severe symptoms than those with chronic fatigue syndrome, but better mental health.
[pullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] “I left medical school believing that ME was not a real disease and I would probably never see a case. I was wrong” [/pullquote] In this excellent piece in Monday’s Daily Telegraph, Dr. Charles Shepherd describes the history of ME’s neglect and says it’s time for doctors
Researchers analysed 100 blood samples from the Solve ME/CFS Biobank of patients and results included finding 3 clusters. The cluster of Interleukin-16 (IL-16), IL-7 and VEGF-A was both significantly downregulated and tightly correlated with each other. IL-16 is a pro-inflammatory cytokine and the reduction shown may indicate immunodeficiency. IL-7 is indispensable for the creation and survival of immune cells (T cells, B cells, NK cells). VEGF-A: stimulates new blood vessel and muscle growth.
What if we could take all of the information we have learned from all of those years of hundreds of people reading and writing about thousands of news and research articles across all of our forums and blogs and Facebook pages, and create one massive, interlinked, and structured knowledge base?
Professor James Coyne yesterday posted online his letter to PLOS One complaining about the PACE authors’ failure to provide him with data from a paper published in the journal. Coyne’s letter was premature because he had been misinformed that he would receive a response within 20 days rather than 20 working days. However, it indicated
