A nanoelectronics-blood-based diagnostic biomarker for ME/CFS (2019) Esfandyarpour, Davis et al

Jonathan Edwards said:
Does anyone know how to access the paper itself? I am surprised to find that mY UCL account does not seem to access it - presumably because it is still 'e-hot'. Normally I can get access to all routine journals.

The abstract is disappointing - not what I would hope of a scientific paper, but THEYthink that may be the journal spin these days. No actual data, just interpretation. If that is the way science is done these days goodness help us.
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In a sense, the study does not lend itself to having results in the abstract. You could quote impedance results, for example, but they may have no direct clinical relevance. The main result is a sparation of ME patients from healthy controls.
 
i understand, pwmecfs PBMC perform badly under (hyper)osmotic stress

The observed impedance patterns may be due to the presence or absence of plasma-associated factors.

that the addition of salts or other osmotic agents to the cell environment may induce
the production of inflammatory cytokines
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The most exciting news for me was to see Chris Ponting as the first expert on the SMC website.
Also, his critque seems to be the most relevant. Is he also being quoted in the media coverage?

It's a pity the Stanford press release didn't do better. "Biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome identified" seems to be misleading. Plus, why only CFS, not ME/CFS in the headline?
 
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MSEsperanza said:
The most exciting news for me was to see Chris Ponting as the first expert on the SMC website.
Also, his critque seems to be the most relevant. Is he also quoted in the media coverage?

It's a pity the Stanford press release didn't do better. "Biomarker for chronic fatigue syndrome identified" seems to be misleading. Plus, why only CFS, not ME/CFS in the headline?
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CP is quoted in some of the media coverage.

I agree. It's quite crazy that Ron Davis himself often uses the term CFS rather than ME or ME/CFS, given the state Whitney is in.
 
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InitialConditions said:
In a sense, the study does not lend itself to having results in the abstract. You could quote impedance results, for example, but they may have no direct clinical relevance. The main result is a sparation of ME patients from healthy controls.
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Sorry, but if the authors want other scientists to take them seriously they need to present the crucial data in the abstract in a watertight form. There is never any difficulty doing that if you have hard data. If the impedance results are of no clinical relevance then the study is of no clinical relevance. The main result is separation of impedance results in ME patients and controls!
 
The graphs look pretty persuasive to me, I just really hope we get a breakthrough that works out and not another repeat of XMRV. Do we know anything about how well controlled it was such as were the measurements made blind and all samples collected and handled in the same way ?

*I see they addressed some of this
both sets of samples collected simultaneously
Patient and control samples were handled exactly the same in all preprocessing steps.
 
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I am sorry to say that I still do not understand what they did or why. I have no idea how many cells they tested or whether they even knew how many cells they were testing. The introduction does not inspire confidence. I really would like to think this study is meaningful but so far I can get no feel for what these lines mean.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
Sorry, but if the authors want other scientists to take them seriously they need to present the crucial data in the abstract in a watertight form. There is never any difficulty doing that if you have hard data. If the impedance results are of no clinical relevance then the study is of no clinical relevance. The main result is separation of impedance results in ME patients and controls!
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I think what this boils down to is that we have an 'identifier' but we don't yet understand why. Of course the impedance results are relevant - we just don't know how relevant.
 
they must be sure that this impedence problem is different with autism, MS, fibromyalgia (...) ?
they cant have just controlled with healthy people ?
 
I must admit I don't understand why a small pilot study should warrant such a massive media blitz. It seems to me a bit of an own goal. It leaves it wide open for the likes of Wessely to dismiss it as too early to say whether it will prove to be clinically helpful as a diagnostic test. The researchers themselves say there's a lot more steps to go through before it is proven. It could fall at any of those steps.
 
I dont know about any of this, i'm troubled by Prof @Jonathan Edwards' comments so i'm not getting excited.


in the independent article
the salt caused a big spike in the cellular energy in the samples taken from people with chronic fatigue, suggesting they’re overreacting to this stress.
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oh well no need to worry then... CBT will address this overreaction & stop those silly cells from catastrophising
 
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