Research news from Bhupesh Prusty

Sure am glad I got my hopes up...

 

I just watched it, and it was very rushed. I had trouble following along but caught some of the gist of it. I still feel in the dark though.

I don't think he has all his ducks in a row yet.

 

I felt the format didn't lend itself for a thorough explanation. There were 2 questions, someone abruptly put a halt to it and it was time for group pictures or something inane like that. In the 30/40 minute talk with the two reporters I heard from Prusty he was much more coherent. He sometimes didn't grasp something the first time but circled back around to explain it. It seemed like there wasn't time to do so here.

 

I read Stephen's Twitter thread on it. I don't see how this hypothesis is any more compelling than the metabolic trap, or any other hypothesis. Prusty is convinced but researchers are often overconfident in their discoveries. I will watch how this develops. Perhaps his paper will be compelling and the findings will be replicated, or perhaps it will be disproven and fall into the wastebasket of failed hypotheses. It's just another of the many hypotheses we're watching.

 

Organisers often seem to try and cram too much into these conferences. It's great to hear some of the researchers speak in person, especially those we haven't "met" before, but there's more than one way to provide updates on the avenues that are being pursued. Sometimes a short written article on the conference website might be much more illuminating if there's a lot of data or charts; they could also offer informal short reels made by some of the researchers that are available to watch on demand.

Either that, or they need to constrain the content more. If there have been several major projects on immunology, say, there's nothing wrong with a conference focusing on that even though there's other really interesting work happening.

 

I haven't watched the talk so I can't comment on that.

Fibronectin binds to a lot of the things that I have been previously interested in and discussed - gangliosides, integrins, proteoglycans etc. Fibronectin inhibits myelin regeneration in MS (and probably other demyelinating disorders), as well as playing a key role in axonal regeneration.

One of my current (wildly speculative) hypotheses is that persistent chronic fatigue (note I didn't say ME/CFS) is due to sensitisation of small fibre muscle afferents (Type III/IV) as they recover from a specific kind of small fibre neuropathy. (there are multiple types of small nerve fibres - not just the typical nociceptive C-fibres that people like to test for in skin biopsies)

Abberant feedback loops between glial cells and these nerves in the peripheral nervous system can lead to the sensitisation as the nerves recover from damage (even bystander damage, rather than autoimmunity like GBS or anti-MOG neuropathy, two rare autoimmune syndromes that often lead to a persistent ME/CFS-like syndrome, complete with PEM).

Hence elevated Fibronectin could be an indicator that something is going wrong.

Exercise physiologists have known the role that these afferents play in both the sensations associated with fatigue as well as central fatigue and autonomic responses for over 10 years, but for some reason most ME/CFS researchers prefer to stay in their own bubble and ignore this research.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22300329/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1566070214001738
https://journals.lww.com/acsm-essr/...luence_of_Group_III_IV_Muscle_Afferent.8.aspx https://physoc.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1113/JP276460 (the key relationship between the brain and the body that leads to central fatigue IS known and well established - this mechanism also predicts a reduction in performance at the first ventilatory threshold if there is increased afferent feedback!)

 

Here's a thoughtful and seemingly informed breakdown of Prusty's short presentation in Berlin from aure @maureviv on Twitter:

 

On youtube now

 

The Twitter thread also gives a link to the presentation, which is stored on a Google drive. There's no indication of whether it's been released with permission, but it does look as if it was made by the organisers; the camera is on a tripod and the sound is recorded properly.

I hope it's okay to note this here, given that there's no direct link from the forum to the talk @Trish.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1664542748945391616

 

The key word here is 'potential'. Definitely interesting but still very early days.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1664559860191510528


Came across this in my twitter timeline. Goes into a bit more depth on what Prusty is talking about.

*edit* Didn't notice there was already a thread where her tweets were being posted. This one's particularly about Prusty though.