Pathogens associated with triggering ME/CFS - discussion thread

…No word of a lie.

 

Some have suggested to have common cellular and molecular pathological mechanisms in post infectious diseases, so between onset and progression only time will tell if all roads lead to Rome or delayed PEM.

 

My illness symptoms started with Beijing flu which i caught immediately after recovering from a week long stomach bug . all the symptom hit like a truck after the near two week long fever . After 6 months of not recovering i was diagnosed with M E.

 

A double tap.
I think it's likely not one thing , but a combination.
An assault by a tag team....

 

Does this suggest a blindsided immune response ?
Was the stomach bug inducing a response which made a viral infection more lethal ?
Hmmm

 

That sounds valid to me. If a viral infection, eg as seen with SARS-CoV-2, causes metabolic reprogramming that leaves the immune system dysregulated for a period [1], then a second hit could be the nail in the coffin. Perhaps two hits are not required in everyone but maybe the majority?

We've learned that a significant number of Covid infections are asymptomatic [2].
The second hit could be an immune challenge that doesn't specifically require a further infection - viral or otherwise. Perhaps major surgery, physical trauma or some other inflammatory process.

Perhaps that underlies the 10%? non-infective ME onset histories. I suspect I had an asymptomatic infection in Aug 2020. In late Nov I had single-leg varicose vein sclerosing, which required daily 40 minute walks. The amount of swelling/inflammation in that leg was surprisingly excessive although settled after a few weeks. But by Dec things were going off and I crapped out in mid Jan. Not that I could have been forewarned in the circumstances, but I'm a bit suspicious that the combination may have done me in where either by itself may not have. Maybe.

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[1]
Long COVID manifests with T cell dysregulation, inflammation and an uncoordinated adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2 (2024, Nature Immunology)

Post-COVID exercise intolerance is associated with capillary alterations and immune dysregulations in skeletal muscles (2023, Acta Neuropathologica Communications)

Major alterations to monocyte and dendritic cell subsets lasting more than 6 months after hospitalization for COVID-19 (2023, Frontiers in Immunology)

Impaired ketogenesis ties metabolism to T cell dysfunction in COVID-19 (2022, Nature)

Host metabolic reprogramming in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection: A systems biology approach (2021, Microbial Pathogenesis)

[2]
Persistent symptoms after COVID-19 are not associated with differential SARS-CoV-2 antibody or T cell immunity (2023, Nature Communications)

A common allele of HLA is associated with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection (2023, Nature)

 

Interesting, I also believe I had a sort of double infection. The first one was just some nasty cold, it gave me a cough that kept going away and coming back, it was really annoying but I kept going on with my life. Then I recovered from that and a while later EBV knocked me out and I've never been the same since. I believe I was probably infected at the same time by the same person. It is clear that I got the cold from the guy I was dating at the time but I probably also got the EBV from him together with the cold, as EBV has a much longer incubation time (it can be more than a month). And you can't catch EBV very easily, it spreads through saliva etc. So it kind of checks out.

Edit: of course, EBV in itself may have been my trigger and the other virus may very well be just a red herring, I have no way to tell.

 

In my case I suspect I had asymptomatic h pylori infection for a while and was activated when I got hit by a sudden viral onset. I think it was 2 hits. First was the hit and run virus, and the second hit was the underlying activated h pylori that lingered on for the next 5 years until I was tested and treated.