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Preprint Initial findings from the DecodeME genome-wide association study of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, 2025, DecodeMe Collaboration
Behaviour, not symptoms? And what caused the immune system to act this way? Does DecodeME reveal that unequivocally?
Jonathan Edwards
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I think that must basically be right, even if you aren't supposed to ascribe desires to viruses. If you do that the next thing is to make them function.
Simon M
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I'm not sure that is the case. The first thing they look for is the genetic signal, then they look to see what was captured by that genetic signal. I think that was mainly protein coding genes. I had a feeling there was at least one RNA species. I don't know if that showed up in the supplementary information?
Must? One or two assumptions folded into this logic?
I'm simply not sure this needs to be true.
Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
All living things pretty much have to be genetically programmed to survive and to replicate because if not, they would not be around anymore.
The only way I can imagine that a virus might survive in a population if it causes people to essentially hibernate, is if it causes only some people to hibernate due to rare traits in those people.
Maybe others have some other ideas?
Andy
Senior Member (Voting rights)
For what it is worth, I'll treat your questions in good faith.
Behaviour, "the way in which a machine or natural phenomenon works or functions".
An immune challenge of some sort.
Of course not, and we make no such claim.
Fair. But it doesn't have to manifest in typical fashion, i.e. at the progressive expense of the infected. Take parasites, for example.
Perhaps if it's not the virus that persists, or if it is, that it doesn't conform to usual characteristics. Similar to ME/CFS qualities. Of course, it doesn't have to be a virus.
Why wouldn't you? But thanks.
Behavior is one step removed from symptoms, which of course would explain why sickness behavior was coined by a veterinarian.
Utsikt
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
If you take the general definition of behaviour that Andy provided, it encapsulates every symptom.
On the topic of "what does DecodeME" show, my feeling is that it's really early for anyone to be saying with much confidence that the genes they found point to any specific pathway. From the DecodeME blog and paper respectively:
Here are the candidate genes suggested by DecodeME:
Is it really possible to say that the above list of genes indicates "immunological causes"? Genuine question, since I don't know much about any of them. But my impression is that genes often have lots of unrelated functions. And the genes related to ME/CFS will likely be only a subset of genes from each locus above, if the right gene is even listed at all. So it feels like you could pretty much write any story you want based on the genes and gene functions you pick.
I'm more excited about the MAGMA analysis that found overexpression of ME/CFS-associated genes in the brain (though unfortunately not much more specific than that) as pointing to the nervous system since the technique is much less biased than trying to create a story from the literature.
Here are the candidate genes suggested by DecodeME:
Is it really possible to say that the above list of genes indicates "immunological causes"? Genuine question, since I don't know much about any of them. But my impression is that genes often have lots of unrelated functions. And the genes related to ME/CFS will likely be only a subset of genes from each locus above, if the right gene is even listed at all. So it feels like you could pretty much write any story you want based on the genes and gene functions you pick.
I'm more excited about the MAGMA analysis that found overexpression of ME/CFS-associated genes in the brain (though unfortunately not much more specific than that) as pointing to the nervous system since the technique is much less biased than trying to create a story from the literature.