Ron Davis's trypanosome 'signature' finding (IIMER conference 2018)

Its not clear. Some parasites, much larger, are almost impossible to find. It depends on numbers, locations, and lifecycle. If they rarely enter the blood and in small numbers they might not be seen, and a blood test would give a false negative. More sensitive methods might be required, such as looking for DNA or RNA.

 

Just for balance, I've never been outside western Europe, so ME must have made a special journey to come and get me.

 

Well, as someone from the UK who has ME, and whose son also has ME, and whose idea of an exotic trip to the wilds meant a caravan in Cornwall or Norfolk, it would be hard to come up with some sort of foreign assault on our systems. I have watched a fair amount of David Attenborough though.

 

Is there any possibility trypanosome could be imported, e.g. via food from abroad, meat, animals etc.?

 

Trypanosome sounds way out there to me.... autoimmunity seems far more realistic considering that it is not uncommon for 2 family members to have it. Autoimmune disease is rampant on one side of my family. None of them struck gold like me though.

 

Well, a couple of years before I became ill, it was discovered that a major US fast food chain had been sent horse meat labeled as "beef" from an oversees supplier. I remember people making jokes about it, like telling their burgers before they took a bite, "Whoa, boy!"

When I looked into the possibility of food borne trypanosomes, I found an article that said it's unlikely for them to be passed to humans in meat, and the cooking process reduces that possibility further. Water is a much more likely route than food, but transmission is primarily from the fecal matter of certain insects coming into contact with breaks in the skin.

However, trypanosome-based disease is not exclusive to Africa. "Chagas disease," caused by the trypanosome "T. cruzii," effects about 6.6 million people in Mexico, Central and South America. The parasite is found in several animal species in the US southwest, though only a handful of indigenous vector-borne transmissions have been reported in the US. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194829/

 

Yes. For example, a rare parasitic worm seems to have travelled throughout the world due to Vietnam military veterans coming home. Parasites can travel, especially if they find a home in a human host. However I really doubt such a parasite would have escaped detection for this many decades. Doubt isn't proof though, and while I expect the testing will fail in patients it does need to be done in order to rule out this option.

 

Serious question: Can severe persistent stress have physiological effects that make you more prone to contracting some physical ailment, which then screws you up even if life subsequently becomes otherwise much less stressful? And if so, would one of those physiological effects be to weaken the immune system?

 

I think we need to be clear that what Ron Davis has found, while possibly from a parasite, is more likely to be from things that cause the same changes as the parasite in the expressed genes. In other words, its more likely a parallel problem rather than exactly a trypanosome problem. It may take a lot more research to get a grip on what is going on. Its the very earliest stage of such research right now.

 

Probably not in any significant sense. Stress is a woolly term. It was introduced by Selye to mean the neuroendocrine response to privation rather than privation itself. In the longer time it is pretty hard to pin down. Most people who might be considered to be in a chronic state of stress are affected by other things like malnutrition, alcohol abuse, cold, infection, etc.

 

In Selye's original definition the production of cortisol is stress - or the 'stress response'. The production of cortisol is an integral part of the immune response to infection. Without a cortisol response, as in Addison's disease, you are more susceptible to the effects of infection.

Corticosteroids are only relevant to dampening of the immune response if they are given in higher than physiological doses as part of treatment. Significant dampening requires more than 15mg prednisolone daily, which is probably around four times the normal level.

 

so this is wrong then:
"
Higher and more prolonged levels of circulating cortisol (like those associated with chronic stress) have been shown to have negative effects, such as:*

• Impaired cognitive performance
• Dampened thyroid function
• Blood sugar imbalances, such as hyperglycemia
• Decreased bone density
• Sleep disruption
• Decreased muscle mass
• Elevated blood pressure
• Lowered immune function
• Slow wound healing
• Increased abdominal fat, which has a stronger correlation to certain health problems than fat deposited in other areas of the body. Some of the health problems associated with increased stomach fat are heart attacks, strokes, higher levels of “bad” cholesterol (LDL) and lower levels of “good” cholesterol (HDL), which can lead to other health problems.*"

https://adrenalfatigue.org/cortisol-adrenal-function/

(Have only picked this site as it was the first that came up when I did a search, but there are many many others).

 

I suppose you could do something like compare people with 'primary' anxiety disorders against everyone else - checking rates of infection or something. But there would be confounding factors including different patterns of chemical ingestion, other behaviors, etc etc . Anecdotally it seems like people with even severe, persistent anxiety don't go around getting infections they shouldn't, or cancers that show up in immunosuppressed people. Maybe worth checking out more.

 

@Jonathan Edwards is right that its large doses of cortisol that suppress immune function. Lower levels might actually enhance immune function. Cortisol was once a standard therapy for ME, I even had an aunt on it for that reason, but when it became clear that cortisol was causing major health crises it became unpopular. The issue was not the cortisol, but the dosing protocol.

However I have a question that keeps bugging me. A couple of years back there was a presentation at a seminar, I think in Sweden ? in which they claimed to have found elevated beta cortisol receptors in CFS (I don't recall if they used an ME definition). We have heard nothing since. This finding would directly indicate cortisol resistance if it is accurate. Does anyone know anything further about this? It might have been Bansal who was working on this, my memory is atrocious.

 

@alex3619 , could it be this one?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUDhI0gXbbE

 

I am looking at it but I think it was several years after this, maybe 2016, and dealt with beta cortisol receptors specifically as part of the presentation.

 

https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Amolak_Bansal

 

Yes, I think it is wrong. The negative effects quoted occur with therapeutic doses of cortisol, mostly above 15mg daily prednisolone equivalent although as little as 5mg may produce long term effects like osteoporosis. I do not know of any evidence for stress on its own producing these effects. The cortisol stress response is usually a one-off monophasic thing. And if by 'stress' people mean worry or social pressure etc. I am not aware of any evidence for persistent rises of cortisol of this degree.

 

Cecile Jadin, based in South Africa, wrote a book on the subject of rickettsias and ME-like illnesses:

Anecdotally, grown up in Europe and was fine, lived in Africa and was fine, travelled frequently to Asia and was fine, travelled frequently to Australia and was fine. Then back in the UK, a vicious virus which left people fainting and one person deaf in one year for life was hanging around the office for months. i got ME.

 

According to some sources, this was later believed to be chronic brucellosis.