HERV-K and HERV-W transcriptional activity in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Rodrigues et al. 2019

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/693465v1?rss=1

 

I mean wow.... can't even get the acronym right: 'CFSMS' (!), 'CFS/ME' and 'ME/CFS' in the abstract alone. That's one way to put readers off.

 

Looks like this research is using some of the LSHTM CureME biobank samples.

I've found some other articles that may put it into context wrt ME/CFS.

One of the reasons for looking at this is that HIV seems to induce expression of HERV-K, particularly during active infection: https://retrovirology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1742-4690-9-6
"Increased HERV expression is often seen during carcinogenesis and in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis [2], but it is unclear whether the increased expression is a cause or consequence of the disease."

ref 2 is this paper: Kurth, Bannert. Beneficial and detrimental effects of human endogenous retroviruses https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ijc.24902

 

Why would HERVK be overexpressed in the moderately affected but not the severely affected? It just seems strange.

 

T

True, though this is only at preprint stage. Hopefully most of such errors particularly in the abstract should go after it goes through peer review and editing.

 

It seems to be a null result but the authors are trying to avoid that conclusion. This difference is just reaching the p=0.05 threshold. On other parameters the patients don't differ from controls.

 

I guess we'll have to wait for the whole paper, but my guess is that if HERV-K expression requires the presence of active viral replication from another agent (eg HIV), you might only see that in moderately affected patients because of the energy demands it places on cellular mechanisms.

 

Indeed. It could suggest that "moderate" and "severely" are two different diseases. Or that the results are null...

 

Don't know who this guy is but he posted a snapshot re: RCCX and HERV-K. Looks like he is based in Seattle, Washington from his profile
https://twitter.com/user/status/1148709662088286208

 

Uh. Interesting!

His Twitter bio:

I can't wait until the people who want to tackle the toughest challenges understand this is one of the most interesting ones. So much potential to discover entire new areas of medicine. There's definitely a Nobel prize somewhere in the pipeline once we crack this egg.

 

Kris Fobes offered more info on his work in 7 replies in the same Twitter thread as above.
https://twitter.com/user/status/1148985681139490816

Just to add, isn't it cool that S4Me posts many interesting papers

 

Open access, https://autoimmunhighlights.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13317-019-0122-8