News From Jarred Younger / Neuroinflammation, Pain, and Fatigue Laboratory at UAB, From Aug 2020

[mango]

"055 - Focused ultrasound reduces chronic pain

You can get the open-access paper at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39073370/

Jarred Younger"

 

[Utsikt]

"055 - Focused ultrasound reduces chronic pain

You can get the open-access paper at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39073370/

Jarred Younger"

we did not quantify subjects' ability to distinguish active from sham or expectations of pain relief.

Subjects were informed during recruitment and at consent that this was an exploratory trial and would not lead to a long-term replacement for treatment.

Nonetheless, 3 points of evidence suggest that the sham procedure could not be reliably identified from the active procedure;
(1) The sham successfully elicited a temporary placebo response (Fig. 3);

(2) The time dynamics of the pain reduction effects were comparable across the active and sham conditions regardless of randomization (Supplemental Fig. 4, available at http://links.lww.com/PAIN/C85);

(3) There was no significant difference in the dropout rates between active and sham stimulation.

I don’t buy this line of reasoning. There are absolutely no good reasons to not ask the participants which group they believe they belonged to.

 

[mango]

"An article on using prednisone for Gulf War Illness was recently retracted. The article may be found at the below links. - Jarred Younger"

 

[Trish]

"An article on using prednisone for Gulf War Illness was recently retracted. The article may be found at the below links. - Jarred Younger"

This is the article expaining the retraction:
Retraction: Gulf war illness inflammation reduction trial: A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of low-dose prednisone chronotherapy, effects on health-related quality of life
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10270619/

 

[Utsikt]

This is the article expaining the retraction:
Retraction: Gulf war illness inflammation reduction trial: A phase 2 randomized controlled trial of low-dose prednisone chronotherapy, effects on health-related quality of life
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10270619/

From the retraction:

Based on an independent investigation conducted at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, the Department of Veterans Affairs found that the first author engaged in research misconduct (falsification of research) related to the submission of this article [1]. Specifically, in [1] the first author selectively used study results to suggest a benefit from prednisone, and omitted the results of the originally specified analysis which showed no significant difference between prednisone and placebo. Consequently, the results presented in [1] do not accurately represent the research record. As a result of the research misconduct findings, a request to retract the paper was submitted to PLOS One.

If that is the standard for «research misconduct», I can think of quite a few more articles that should also be retracted..

 

[poetinsf]

067 - New results: The ME/CFS brain is inflamed​

Jared Younger talks about conflicting neuroinflammation papers from 2014 and 2023 and how his new study is a tie breaker.

 

[BrightCandle]

067 - New results: The ME/CFS brain is inflamed​

Jared Younger talks about conflicting neuroinflammation papers from 2014 and 2023 and how his new study is a tie breaker.

I feel I need to know more of the details of what is measured and how and what else it could be measuring. Is this a proxy of some description or does this PET scan genuinely detect currently activated microglia cells?

Secondly is there another explanation for microglia cells being activated in this way that is not immune activation?

 

[poetinsf]

I feel I need to know more of the details of what is measured and how and what else it could be measuring.

I guess we'll know more when his paper is published. He said they used a second-generation tracer which more accurate and more specific to microglia.

 

[wigglethemouse]

I sped watch some parts. I guess we need to wait until the paper is published for a proper read and comparison to controls, and also MS reference data he has access too. Not all ME/CFS patients showed activated microglia. The bits I watched didn't describe if controls had some activation too.

It would also be nice to see if the function of highlighted areas correspond to symptoms in the person with ME/CFS who was scanned. That would be more convincing if there was a correlation.

When he mentioned MS has neuroinflammation I wondered how consistent the PET imaging data is for that vs HC.

 

[ChronicallyOverIt]

Why come out with these statements without even giving a clue of what statistics are… irresponsible imo as people are already sharing this video saying ME/CFS is conclusively a case of neuroinflamtion.

I know YouTube incentivizes posting regularly but yikes huge statement to say without any data to support it publicly.

 

[butter.]

I haven't seen it, but that's huge if true. It wouldn't be very surprising, it seems very unlikely you can get to a state like severe ME without 'inflammation' - past or present - despite what some people on here think.

 

[wigglethemouse]

I took a quick look at PET research into migraines. They are using all sorts of different techniques to try and understand what is going on. It feels like in ME/CFS we are still in the dark ages with the techniques and sample sizes being used in comparison.