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My mistake - I meant shrink (I'm going to blame my migraine for that one!) Except OMF are in the happy situation of having lots of funds. They say they are applying for NIH funds as Esfandyarpour's condition to work on the project. The money will go to him. So I don't see the benefit to OMF...

One more question to address: why hasn't OMF pursued impedance testing? 1. The nanoneedle is cutting edge and proprietary technology, and unfortunately its inventor has no particular interest in ME. He left Stanford, and is apparently now leads his own research group at University of California...

Are you saying the cells were already dead at the start of the experiment? Or that they might have been killed by hyperosmotic stress without first enlarging (@chillier or @Creekside said a volume change is normal in cells that are stressed by hyperosmotic conditions)? I assume the authors...

I am still confused. Are these molecules in the plasma of patients or controls, or molecules introduced by the experimental process as an artefact? If the former, that's still interesting biologically. If an artefact that could account for the case/control differences, I'm not sure how that...

There are a couple of reasons there might be better explanations. 1. I'm not sure how much research was actually done after the work for this research. Throughout, the researchers were hampered by the slow speed of their setup, and manufacturing issues. Hence the work to develop a better system...

If the data is that good, will they be publishing it? I guess the lack of specificity is not necessarily what the ME community wants to hear, but been able to distinguish between sick and healthy. It would be quite something.

Interesting. Can you say any more - e.g. when is the info from and based on how many subjects? Yes, the nanoneedle was developed to be used with a range of sensors that allowed them to detect very specific molecules. The use here seems to have been off-piste. So it's plausible that this level...

Missed that- what kind of difference though? This is an important point. It looks like a mixed picture - but note that 5/5 seem to have been processed in sync, so I don't think that could explain the result (all the controls look much the same, however the samples were collected). Sample...

Thanks for all the comments, though I'm afraid the discussions of the nanoneedle itself are over my head. My working assumption is that whatever changes the nanoneedle detected, they are likely to be significant given the total separation between cases and controls. Plus, I think this is the...

Regardless of any development of the nanoneedle, I think it might be worth following up on the salt stress test, which could potentially reveal a great deal about ME/CFS. I would love comments from people on this thread who know a great deal more about the nanoneedle and this study than I do...

My post on this here generated some interest, so I thought it was worth setting up a separate thread. Please do join in if you are interested too. The nanoneedle salt stress test – too good a clue to leave abandoned on the lab bench?

Background information The original motivation for using the salt stress test was to as the cellular equivalent of provoking PEM. Something that would expose differences in ME cells that are missed under normal conditions. Or a cellular equivalent proxy of the two-day exercise test (that test is...

What can the salt stress test tell us about the biology of ME? The nanoneedle test itself has stalled, and only its inventor seems capable of taking it forward. However, perhaps more valuable than the nanoneedle diagnostic test are the biological changes induced by the salt stress test - and...

That's a big caveat, hence the need for disease controls. But how do we know if it is a disease marker rather than an inactivity marker? I'm sure that's what BPS sceptics would argue. Regardless of biomarker status, any biomolecule associated firmly with the illness would be helpful. But BP...

I agree that this is an unsubstantiated claim. More generally, why do we need a biomarker for severity? Severity. is its own thing. And the fact that fibronectin 1 levels can’t distinguish mild and moderate cases of ME from healthy controls strongly indicates the molecule isn’t playing a major...

This is very interesting work, but I wanted to red flag the conclusions : Based on Bhupesh Prusty‘s recent conference presentation and accompanying slides about the work behind this paper, the results do not come close to supporting such strong conclusions. I wrote a commentary about the...

Thanks, this is very interesting research. But I don’t think it can bear too much weight. It’s very small ( n = 6/6). And the findings could be explained by Fitness: 78% of men and 86% of women in the population meet their definition of 'sedentary' used to select controls. The authors noted a...

Re-nanoneedle They published a paper in a prestigious journal and made a lot of noise about it, and the results were pretty striking. I thought the main problem was that the researcher leading on the nanoneedle have moved on, But even so it does seem strange how they’ve lost all enthusiasm for...

Also, thanks to everyone. ME research is not in great shape, but there are more reasons for optimism than I was allowing. Probably my biggest research disappointment is the failure to follow up the nanoneedle findings. This clearly is never going to happen, but what I really want to see pursued...

Re replicated Raman Spectroscopy findings That looks very interesting - I can't think of more promising biomarker findings, especially since they could separate ME from disease controls. I'm surprised they haven't been able to get further funding from the MEA or ME Research. I think this will...