Sid
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Damn. That's really amping my hyperosmotic stress levels. Yoga, right?
I will throat-punch the next person who asks me, "Have you tried yoga?"
Damn. That's really amping my hyperosmotic stress levels. Yoga, right?
Yes, this sentence, "The test, which is still in a pilot phase, is based on how a person's immune cells respond to stress" is going to be widely misinterpreted as psychological stress, rather than biological stress.Well to be fair that seems to be what the abstract implies.
I'm guessing the SMC is hoping for that. It's clearly a pilot study and it needs to be understood as that. Overhyping is one strategy to be able to claim victory even in the face of defeat, where even if it's a rousing success the usual suspects will say it didn't hold up to the hype they created.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 doubt Stanford did that. The SMC had its coverage lined up and ready to go to try to overhype. That's a deliberate strategy and should not really matter. There should be no hesitation to call their choice to overhype as their own choice and fault them for it.I don't think this should have been pitched to the media before independent replication. This has the potential to hurt us as badly as the XMRV fiasco.
The only thing that matters about Wessely's opinion is that it does not matter. He likes the sound of his own voice, beyond that we can just ignore the mouth noises he makes.SW said: "is it measuring the cause, and not the consequence, of illness?"
If it really proved to be a unique biomarker, would SW's comment matter?
So if these results are reflecting an underlying cause, then that would tentatively suggest all the patients are in a common grouping, rather than distinctly different sub-groups. But of course the results could conceivably be reflecting similar effects from different causes. Would be interesting to know if their patients had a clear distinction between moderate and severe, or if it was a broad spread of severities.Interestingly, most of the results from moderate patients clustered towards the bottom (with the smaller separation from healthy controls (while all of the severe patients were near the top. Suggesting that severity affects results, though these are small samples.
Hmm... Tens of thousands?? Let's be reasonable. Nothing even close to that would be needed.sample of thousands or tens of thousands
I don't think so. He's a high level scientist and likely doesn't want to throw around phrases which do not necessarily have much to do with reality (encephalitis).. It's quite crazy that Ron Davis himself often uses the term CFS rather than ME or CFS, given the state Whitney is in.
Clearly Wessely still believes in his deconditioning nonsense, but it can easily be put to rest and I'm sure it will be. Test against deconditioned patients in bed rest, psych disease and we will have an answer.SW said: "is it measuring the cause, and not the consequence, of illness?"
If it really proved to be a unique biomarker, would SW's comment matter?
...is it measuring the cause, and not the consequence, of illness?"
I suspect it's worse than that, over many, many years (13.6B) the universe conspired, with assistance from others, namely 'evolution', to train and coach the cells to behave in exactly this way to this test.Even more to the point, can we be sure that the patient PBMC's weren't sent a newsletter telling them how to respond to the test?![]()
@Jonathan EdwardsI 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.
Prepared samples (Materials and Methods and SI Appendix) consisted of PBMCs (200 cells per uL) incubated in their plasma and prepared within 5 h of use.
Experimental Setup. To make electrical connections to the sensors' small (50um x 50um) measuring pads, an S-1160 probe station (Signatone) was used. A iocompatible silicone wells FlexWell Incubation Chamber (Grace Bio-Labs) was cut and placed over a sensor as a microfluidic well to contain the sample. For each experiment, 50uL of the prepared sample (SI Appendix) was injected into the microfluidic wells, and real-time electrical impedance measurements were then recorded.
Measurements. All Measurements were performed in a faradic cage to minimize 60 Hz coupling and external interference with our nanoelectronics sensors.
The nanometer-sized sensing region of the sensor consists of a 30-nm-thin oxide layer sandwiched between two 100-nm-thin gold layers.
Before the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (Vrms = 250 mV at f = 15 KHz) (Materials and Methods), all sensors were subjected to an extensive cleaning procedure to eliminate any potential for contamination (Materials and Methods).
Hope that helps.After reaching the baseline, we introduced a small volume (~6uL) of hyperosmotic stressor to the samples. Testing of the sample from the healthy control showed a transient decrease in impedance signal after raising the plasma's NaCl concentration to 200 mmol/L.
They do claim that the finding is unique to ME/CFS. So those comparisons with sick controls are essential.
@Jonathan Edwards Regarding "why" take a look at the citations from the author. I suspect someone decided just to try it because they'd worked on nanoneedle technology previously.I am sorry to say that I still do not understand what they did or why.
Citation 38 might be relevant....34. Esfandyarpour R, et al. (2013) Label-free electronic probing of nucleic acids and proteins at the nanoscale using the nanoneedle biosensor. Biomicrofluidics 7:044114.
35. Esfandyarpour R, Yang L, Koochak Z, Harris JS, Davis RW(2016) Nanoelectronic threedimensional (3D) nanotip sensing array for real-time, sensitive, label-free sequence specific detection of nucleic acids. Biomed Microdevices 18:7.
36. Esfandyarpour R, Esfandyarpour H, Javanmard M, Harris JS, Davis RW (2013) Microneedle biosensor: A method for direct label-free real time protein detection. Sens Actuators B Chem 177:848–855.
37. Esfandyarpour R, Esfandyarpour H, Harris JS, Davis RW (2013) Simulation and fabrication of a new novel 3D injectable biosensor for high throughput genomics and proteomics in a lab-on-a-chip device. Nanotechnology 24:465301.
38. Esfandyarpour R, Javanmard M, Koochak Z, Harris JS, Davis RW (2014) Nanoelectronic impedance detection of target cells. Biotechnol Bioeng 111:1161–1169.
39. Esfandyarpour R, Esfandyarpour H, Javanmard M, Harris JS, Davis RW(2012) Electrical detection of protein biomarkers using nanoneedle biosensors. MRS Proc 1414:mrsf11-1414-hh04-04.
40. Esfandyarpour R, Javanmard M, Koochak Z, Esfandyarpour H, Harris JS, Davis RW (2013) Thin film nanoelectronic probe for protein detection. MRS Proc 1572:mrss13-1572-ss01-10.
SW said: "is it measuring the cause, and not the consequence, of illness?"