Search results

  1. ME/CFS Science Blog

    The causal status of pain catastrophizing: an experimental test with healthy participants, 2005, Severeijns et al

    Nice find. People in the experimental group were given the following info: Their catastrophizing score increased but their pain rating and time in the cold water didn't. They tried to induce negative affect in the control group but that didn't work. As a potential explanation they argue...
  2. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    Also found this Stanford website with info on enhancers and what has been found in other GWAS: https://e2g-portal.stanford.edu/variant/20_48935095_C_CTCTTTTTT Think this is the preprint that introduced it: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.11.09.563812v1
  3. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    Got a hunch that because LD for SNPs often isn't 1 or 0 but a correlation value in between, that the pattern of SNPs is helpful to find out which SNPs are causal. In addition, I suspect that the for complex disease the causal effect often isn't restricted to a single SNP in a region and that the...
  4. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    The links to ZNFX1 and interferon transcription factors are very interesting but the insertion was chosen randomly. Should we perhaps do the same thing for a couple of other insertions in this region? If they have a similar effect it would be quite interesting. Take for example...
  5. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    Was chr20:48935095:C>CTCTTTTTT chosen randomly or was it based on the size of its effect?
  6. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    Yes thanks. Zooming out to 800kb, I got this but not sure how to interpret it. My first impression is that AlphaGenome seem to focus on individual SNP and their effect, while I would think that for many GWAS of diseases it's the pattern of SNPs across a region that tells the story.
  7. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    I've tried inserting the SNP with the lowest p-value from DecodeME and tested RNA expression in only one tissue, the brain (UBERON:0000955). But it didn't show an effect there if I understand the the plot correctly (no difference between the red and grey line). Suspect that we would have to...
  8. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    Just saw their documentary about AlphaFold which figured out how human proteins are folded in 3D and earned them a Nobel prize in 2024. Impressive work, can only hope that AlphaGenome will have the same impact. The documentary is called 'The Thinking Game' and worth a watch:
  9. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome 2026 Avsec et al

    This looks interesting. Perhaps it could help to interpret the findings of DecodeME and clear out some ambiguity about which genes are involved? From what I can understand it looks like a incremental improvement over previous models rather than a big breakthrough. Part of this is likely because...
  10. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Vagus nerve-mediated neuroimmune modulation for rheumatoid arthritis: a pivotal randomized controlled trial 2025 Tesser et al

    Was thinking that if the treatment really worked it would probably also skew the results in the intervention group, with more people correctly identifying they were getting the treatment and not the inactive control. This wouldn't explain why 40% in the sham group strongly believed they were...
  11. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Everything is in The Vagus Nerve: What is The Relationship Between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Coronavirus?, 2020, Selma

    We have a thread about this trial. It seems that blinding wasn't fully preserved and patients could somewhat guess if they were in the intervention or sham control group. Vagus nerve-mediated neuroimmune modulation for rheumatoid arthritis: a pivotal randomized controlled trial 2025 Tesser et...
  12. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Everything is in The Vagus Nerve: What is The Relationship Between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Coronavirus?, 2020, Selma

    Posted about this on social media and Prof. Ponting responded: Not for #MEcfs but for rheumatoid arthritis: Successful clinical trial of vagus nerve-mediated neuroimmune modulation: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-025-04114-7 Question asked by Eric Topol and Kevin Tracey is: Can this...
  13. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Everything is in The Vagus Nerve: What is The Relationship Between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Coronavirus?, 2020, Selma

    Counterpoint: I assume it was only cut at the stomach or abdomen, so it wouldn't disrupt the vagal nerve's function of picking up inflammation or damage signals elsewhere in the body and passing it on to the brain? ME/CFS might most often be caused by local inflammation of the vagal nerve at...
  14. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Why ME/CFS and Long COVID Activism in Germany Has Been Relatively Successful - blog, 2026, Strottman

    I suspect this is another aspect that might significantly hamper advocacy: if patients get a different, related diagnosis to ME/CFS. I saw this in Belgium where the ME/CFS community got torn apart when one popular doctor started diagnosing patients as having Chronic Lyme. In French speaking...
  15. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Why ME/CFS and Long COVID Activism in Germany Has Been Relatively Successful - blog, 2026, Strottman

    Don't want to go into political discussion but I suspect that that individualistic anglo-saxon mindset created a poor welfare system overall, not just for ME/CFS but for all disabilities. And because of this, ME/CFS patients have it particularly though in these countries, despite there being...
  16. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Why ME/CFS and Long COVID Activism in Germany Has Been Relatively Successful - blog, 2026, Strottman

    I think that in the UK the problem was that some patient organisations sided with BPS researchers and this created internal division. In the US, there were ME/CFS advocacy calls where activists yelled at scientists. Although Solve has the same professional and lobbying mindset, I think that...
  17. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Why ME/CFS and Long COVID Activism in Germany Has Been Relatively Successful - blog, 2026, Strottman

    My guess is that it mainly started with Scheibenbogen diagnosing patients with ME/CFS without any psychobabble. This created a group of patients who likely felt less shame or stigma from this diagnosis and were willing to advocate for it. I see the many press articles and demonstrations as a...
  18. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Why ME/CFS and Long COVID Activism in Germany Has Been Relatively Successful - blog, 2026, Strottman

    Yet the UK and US have always been the countries that have done the most in recognising and studying ME/CFS so don't think this cultural aspect is an important factor in research and recognition of ME/CFS. The Netherlands very much follows this individualist and anglo-saxon mindset and does more...
  19. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Population-scale sequencing resolves determinants of persistent EBV DNA, 2026, Nyeo et al

    Think these are the results relevant to ME/CFS (taken from Supplementary Table 3 - sheet B AII UKB PheWAS results). Human readable phenotype Raw phenotype beta se p nCases dataset Root broad.root refined 41202#G933#Postviral fatigue syndrome 41202#G933#G93.3 Postviral fatigue syndrome...
  20. ME/CFS Science Blog

    Everything is in The Vagus Nerve: What is The Relationship Between Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Coronavirus?, 2020, Selma

    Thanks for spelling this out. So in ME/CFS one key area to study might be how neurons are activated intracellularly by cytokines that signal viral infection and induce (certain types of) sickness behavior. Then we would have to compare those pathways in ME/CFS and controls. Suspect this would...
Back
Top Bottom