Thoughts About M.E. | Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Advocacy
No Poster Girl | Life With Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A bed-lyin', pill-poppin', muscle-wastin' good time.
ME versus CFS
My muse left on extended vacation when the Lipkin XMRV study and subsequent press conference succeeded in discrediting retroviruses as a possible explanation for ME/CFS, with lots of important questions still left unanswered. The discussion reverted to whether or not it is a real disease and which set of diagnostic criteria are best, so there hasn’t been much to inspire me. It got pretty depressing. The IOM report was a joke: “The term ‘myalgic encephalomyelitis’ is not appropriate because there is a lack o
My reaction to the Naviaux et al paper, Metabolic features of chronic fatigue syndrome, was dismay that the damage is so extensive and widespread. So many broken pathways. Finding a specific drug target seems very unlikely. There won’t be an answer anytime soon. They, and everyone else, including Lipkin and Hanson, are studying downstream effects, without attempting to identify the root cause. It’s a good thing that people are thinking and looking, but hibernation and dauer are not disease states and bein
So what lies in wait to be activated by heterogeneous triggers and once activated causes immune dysfunction, neurological disease and opportunistic infections? The most likely explanation lives in the realm between retrovirology and genomics, the difference between the fields being as small as a single mutation. We have been injecting retroviruses and pieces of retroviruses into people for over a century. What are the chances that nothing bad happened from that? XMRV apparently doesn’t infect people, but in
Thoughts About M.E. | Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) Advocacy
No Poster Girl | Life With Severe Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: A bed-lyin', pill-poppin', muscle-wastin' good time.
ME versus CFS