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As far as prodrome goes, probably the weirdest thing I had in the months before onset was an odd intolerance to cold. On several occasions, I would climb into a cold car around 10 PM to drive home and I would just be swept by waves of a kind of shivering that I had never experienced before. It...

This 2018 paper found that respiratory viruses can alter the gut microbiome (in mice). Assuming that something similar can happen in humans, perhaps the non-specific "viral triggers" apparent in many ME cases are actually only important in that the immune response to them disrupts the gut...

Balance problems have long been recognized in ME. It's certainly not universal, but nor does it seem to be all that uncommon. Connecting the problem to orthostatic intolerance seems to have been a more recent development, and it clearly contributes to many cases. On the other hand, there also...

FWIW, in the first few years of the illness, I had a couple of liver function test results that seemed to concern the doctors who ordered them. Each time, the tests were normal on retesting. Maybe that's par for the course with liver functions tests, or maybe it's a more frequent occurrence in...

Perhaps they have already thought of this, but I wonder if their biobank/patient registry has a mechanism to retrieve samples from patients who are in remission. While the system is obviously set up to acquire samples from patients who are ill, they might want to proactively try to acquire and...

The low BMI connection to CFS reminds me that I was very thin as a child, even though my height was normal. My older brother was never anywhere near as thin as I was. The pediatrician assured my mother than I would put on weight eventually, and I did do so during my teenage years. I was of an...

I was in my early 20's and had a lot of stamina at the time of onset. I would ride my bike for an hour or two several times a week for exercise and would come home with my shirt soaked in sweat. I had to cut that back when I got a job that routinely required 12+ hour days. I did have some kind...

The same thought crossed my mind, but I'm not so sure that it is easy to find a group of bacterial and metabolite differences in a large proportion of the ME/CFS patient and in very few controls. I assume you have to find the entire group of differences in (most) ME/CFS patients and the entire...

This website ranks AUC (area under the curve) scores like this: ( a score of .50 is like a coin toss ) .90-1 = excellent (A) .80-.90 = good (B) .70-.80 = fair (C) .60-.70 = poor (D) .50-.60 = fail (F) [This table also shows up in this 2009 paper on diagnostic accuracy. ] I've also seen it...

Sort of along the same lines, I noticed that ceramides were mentioned, but only becasue I first heard of ceramides last winter when my dermatologist prescribed a ceramide-based cream for my hands that were chapped to the point of bleeding. Ceramides are a waxy lipid molecule that help to retain...

Not that I claim to fully understand this, but I think a major take-a-way here is to be found in chart S3 in the Supplementary Figures & Tables. They take their previous work on bacteria and combine it with the top 10 predictive metabolites found in this study and find that they can...

He does not specifically mention burning sensations in the video. When he mentioned that small-fiber polyneuropathy was being found in skin biopsies of 40% of ME patients who also had "pre-load failure," and then mentioned that those fibers can produce "neuropathic pain" when they are misfiring...

Interesting. I've never really paid much attention to "small-fiber neuropathy," considering it to be connected to fibromyaglia, which I assumed was mostly diagnosed by tender points, which I do not have. However, I have experienced unexplained, and very long-lived sunburn-like sensations on/in...

Interesting article on how the cytomegalovirus (CMV) evades the immune system. It prevents the infected cell's MHC (HLA) molecules from reaching the surface of the cell, where they would normally prompt the immune system to destroy the cell. However, the absence of MHC molecules on the cell's...

This somehow reminds of the time that talk show host David Letterman became irate when his attempt to replicate the "Denorex Challenge" was interrupted. He loudly insisted, "This is SCIENCE, damn it!"

Leonard Jason is at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago apparently uses a version of "The Philadelphia Grid System," in which there are 8 blocks to a mile. So, if that's the metric - and I'm not sure that it is - a block would be 660 feet long. "A walk around the (square) block"...

God, what an awful article. Opinions expressed by Forbin are his own. [ Of course, I probably didn't take the time to understand it fully - which only seems fair. ]

Makes sense. The article I linked above also says, "Absolute ethanol may inactivate microbes without destroying them because the alcohol is unable to fully permeate the microbe's membrane." I don't know why diluted alcohol would more readily cross a membrane, though.

According to Wikipedia, ethanol's optimum concentration when used as an antiseptic is 70%. Vodka is typically 40% ethanol, so not the best antiseptic, but probably better than nothing. Some vodka ranges higher, with a theoretical maximum of 95.6% ethanol by distillation. Vodka in the highest...

It sounds like these would be non-living, t-cell-sized, flexible capsules with a surface coating that makes them stick to infected cells. I guess the interior of the capsule would contain some sort of cytotoxic substance that would somehow get released when contact is made. Sounds like they've...