Researchers say that they have created a blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome

Researchers at Stanford University and other universities say they have taken an important step in potentially helping people with poorly understood illness who have long been viewed with skepticism by the public and even by some physicians. They claim to have created a blood test that can easily identify people with myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME / CFS).

The diagnostic test not only further validates a biological basis for the symptoms of sufferers, according to the authors, but may indicate new treatment options for this often unmanageable disease.

Currently, ME / CFS is a diagnostic label that we give to people who suffer from prolonged disabling fatigue, especially after physical exertion, and other symptoms, such as chronic pain, that can not be explained by another known disease. The elusive nature of EM / CFS has already led many doctors to consider that it was a psychological harm, as people's symptoms were attributed to a psychosomatic manifestation of their stress or their anxiety. But in recent years, the medical community has generally acknowledged that the symptoms of ME / CFS have a physical root, although we still do not know how this is going.

The lack of biomarkers that physicians could use to identify it is a major obstacle to understanding this disorder. People with EM / CFS tend to have immune cell levels or other indicators of health status indistinguishable from the average person. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2 million people in the United States could have ME / CFS, but more than 90% are undiagnosed. People who are diagnosed must have an exhausting and frustrating battery of tests that exclude other diseases, and often have little or no means to manage their symptoms.

But researchers at the origin of this study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, claim to have developed a test that, at least in a small sample of people, can distinguish between people with EM / CFS population in general.

Their test, a "nanoelectronic-based blood test," measures how a person's immune cells and blood plasma interfere with an electrical current, and then uses these results as an indicator of overall cell health (plus change). current is important, essentially, the least healthy cells). In this case, they hoped to see how these cells reacted to stress and thus exposed them to salt, as this forced them to compensate for osmosis or the movement of water from within the cell . Then they put the cells in the stream.

In their pilot study, they tested blood samples of 40 people. Half had been diagnosed with ME / CFS, while the other half were healthy volunteers. And in all samples of patients with EM / CFS, they were able to detect relatively large changes in the current compared to those from healthy people.

"We do not know exactly why cells and plasma are doing this, or even what they do," said lead author Ron Davis, a biochemist and geneticist at Stanford University, in a statement. "But there is scientific evidence that this disease is not a fabrication of the patient's mind. We clearly see a difference in how healthy and chronic immune cells of fatigue syndrome treat stress. "

The team's test could theoretically not only be used to diagnose ME / CFS in humans, but also to track the effectiveness of potential future treatments and determine if they can restore the stress response of the cells. Many of these treatments are already under study for ME / CFS, but the team has also been able to find a drug that appears to help cells affected by ME / CFS to better respond to stress, but does not has not been tested yet. The tiny components used to create the tests are also relatively inexpensive, which greatly facilitates their mass production and makes them accessible to doctors and patients.

But there is still much to do before their test is considered a slam dunk, leaving many unanswered questions. Researchers elsewhere have made early efforts to find potential biomarkers for ME / CFS, for example, but these biomarkers are unlikely to help doctors diagnose each case. This is not entirely surprising, as there is no single cause or underlying mechanism that can explain the symptoms of each individual (among possible factors are viral infections, genetics and thyroid problems ). Therefore, even if the team's test could identify all the team members who have an ME / CFS, this does not mean that it will be the same once they start to study larger ones. groups of people.

Nevertheless, for people with ME / CFS (including Davis's own son, whose diagnosis led him to start studying the disease), these additional advances are worth their weight in gold.