Research News    

 

Support Biomedical Research With Merge

 

http://www.meresearch.org.uk/friends/Standing%20Order%20form.pdf

 

Please click on the above link to download a Standing Order form.  MERGE have no objection to them being photocopied or distributed – the more people this campaign reaches the better.  As a research organisation MERGE do not have a membership as such, but anyone who signs up to give by Standing Order is assured of getting up-to-date news from the research projects straight from the horse’s mouth as it were.

They have one project in progress at the moment and are about to start a major study into children with ME as soon as they have secured the last piece of funding. They have also agreed to fund a MERGE Doctoral Studentship in conjunction with the Physiotherapy Department of Glasgow Caledonian University over the next three years to look at all aspects of pain in ME sufferers.  So things are moving ahead and the major problem they have is funding on an on-going basis-hence the reason behind the Standing Order campaign, so that they can plan ahead.

 

Merge team also:

 

· Helps publish scientific papers (five in the past year alone).

· Produces high quality professional reviews and reports (such as “New developments in the biology of ME/CFS” – our recent report of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Workshop).

· Presents biomedical research at meetings and conferences (such as the presentation in April 2004 at the Edinburgh International Science Festival).

· Helps researchers apply to grant-awarding bodies (such as the Medical Research Council in 2004)

 

Note from the ED – We would strongly recommend that members make a regular donation via the enclosed Standing Order Mandate. The research being carried out at MERGE is looking at the biomedical problems of people with ME and we need to continue to encourage this type of research. Thank you!

 

Visit the MERGE Website for more information: merge@pkavs.org.uk

 

Oxidative stress and clinical symptoms

Dr Neil Abbot describes some new MERGE-funded research

For the housebound and bedbound people represented by the 25% ME Group, it’s important to know that biomedical research is being done, but also that these experiments have some relevance to clinical symptoms. So, the results of a new scientific paper might be of some interest as it reports, for the first time, that the clinical symptoms of ME/CFS can be associated with "oxidative stress" in the blood.

Oxidative stress has been a hot topic in medical research over the last few years, and it is now clear that it is also an important factor in ME/CFS. Circulating in our blood are highly reactive molecules, known as free radicals, which can cause damage to our body’s cells; a process called oxidative stress. Such damage is implicated in a number of conditions, including cardiovascular disease, most neurological diseases (including Alzheimer’s), and the ageing process. Importantly, oxidative stress might also be associated with acute and chronic infections which many believe to be at the root of ME/CFS.

Several scientific studies have found that there are an excessive number of free radicals in people with the illness that might well be linked to the generation of symptoms in these patients. Dr Gwen Kennedy and the team at the University of Dundee’s Department of Medicine have been exploring this in more detail. They measured isoprostane levels in the blood of 47 patients with ME/CFS. Isoprostanes are by-products of the oxidative process, and are particularly nasty, causing blood vessels to constrict and promoting damage to the special lining of blood vessels called the endothelium. Isoprostanes are particularly sensitive and reliable markers of oxidative stress, and Dr Kennedy has found that their levels were raised by as much as 40% in patients compared with healthy volunteers.

In the new scientific report she related these findings to clinical symptoms and found that isoprostane levels significantly positively correlated with joint pain and post exertional illness, and found some association with  muscle pain and unrefreshing sleep. She also found that isoprostane levels are significantly higher patients reporting the most severe post-exercise illness than in patients with mild post-exercise illness, and in patients with more severe joint pain than those with either no or mild joint pain. However, these associations were only present in ME/CFS patients whose blood pressure and weight were within "normal" ranges.

This is the first time that raised levels of the gold standard measure of in vivo oxidative stress and their association with ME/CFS symptoms have been reported. The source of the free radicals has yet to be determined, but it could arise from a variety of biological processes such as chronic infections, immune dysfunction, and abnormalities within muscle cells or within the central nervous. The team in Dundee is engaged in researching this further.

Interestingly, the authors say that on balance ME/CFS patients have a biochemical profile consistent with cardiovascular risk, and the presence of high levels of isoprostanes may explain some of the symptoms of the disease. It is possible to speculate that supplementation with specific antioxidant medications might help to ameliorate symptoms and any potential cardiovascular complications of the illness, but further work and replication of the results by other research groups around the world will be needed before antioxidant supplementation can be recommended as a specific therapy.