1) 🇧🇪 A new ME/CFS study in Belgium, funded by ME Research UK (MERUK) and the Gordon Parish Charitable Trust. It will explore whether the immune system in people with ME/CFS is exhausted by prolonged activation.
2) The study will include 60 ME/CFS patients and 60 controls matched for age, sex and BMI, from two previous cohorts. Blood samples have been collected before and after a physical stress test to induce PEM. 3) In this new study, the researchers will look at the expression of markers associated with immune exhaustion (PD-1, Tim-3, TIGIT, TCF-1, Tox, T-bet, Eomes) and immune senescence (CD57, KLRG1 and CD28). 4) It will also look at epigenetic changes, the metabolic profiles of immune cells and their response to treatment with immune checkpoint inhibitors. The later are used, for example, in cancer to make worn-out immune cells effective again. 5) The study of the immune system is much more advanced in diseases such as cancer, where the development of immunotherapies has revolutionised treatment. The researchers hope is that these breakthroughs can also be transferred to ME/CFS. 6) The image below shows the researchers involved: Dr Andrea Polli, Prof. Lode Godderis and PhD student. Yanthe Buntinx from Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Big thanks to MERUK for funding these studies.
7) Link to the announcement from MERUK with more info:
www.meresearch.org.uk