cytokines

Distinct stages to chronic fatigue syndrome identified

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Distinct changes in the immune systems of patients with ME or chronic fatigue syndrome have been found, say scientists.

Increased levels of immune molecules called cytokines were found in people during the early stages of the disease, a Columbia University study reported.

It said the findings could help improve diagnosis and treatments.

UK experts said further refined research was now needed to confirm the results.

It appears that ME patients are flush with cytokines until around the three-year mark, at which point the immune system shows evidence of exhaustion”

Dr Mady HornigUniversity of Columbia

People with ME (myalgic encephalopathy) or CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) suffer from exhaustion that affects everyday life and does not go away with sleep or rest.

They can also have muscle pain and difficulty concentrating.

ME can also cause long-term illness and disability, although many people improve over time.

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Ancient Apoptosis Humans and coral share a cell-death pathway that has been conserved between them for more than half a billion years.

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A major pathway for strategically inducing cell death has been shared between humans and coral since their ancestral lineages diverged, according to a paper published today (June 9) in PNAS. The pathway, mediated by cytokines and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptors, was once thought to have originated more recently, prior to the divergence of vertebrates and invertebrates, and to have diversified in the vertebrate lineage. But as it turns out, corals have as diverse a collection of TNF proteins as do humans, and TNF-induced apoptosis is involved in coral bleaching.

“The dogma has been if there’s something not in a fly or a worm, something even more ancient such as a coral should be even simpler,” said Steven Quistad, a marine biologist at San Diego State University and lead author of the study. “Corals are actually much more similar to humans than we ever thought.”

“The large number [of TNF ligand and TNF receptor] encoding genes in the [coral] genome is surprising and changes our understanding of the origin and divergence of these gene families,” Greg Wiens, a research immunologist at the National Center for Cool and Cold Water Aquaculture, a division of the US Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service in West Virginia, wrote in an e-mail to The Scientist. “These findings highlight the importance of genome projects of basal phyla toward understanding the evolution of immunity.”

 

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