Australian Study Finds Modest Cellular and Metabolic Differences in Blood of ME/CFS Patients

A study investigating cellular differences in ME/CFS patients was recently published in Cell Reports Medicine. The research compared blood samples from 61 people with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome to a small group of healthy volunteers and identified differences in immune cells and molecules involved in energy production.

Ella Engel and 60 other people with ME/CFS donated blood samples for the study.

The study involved 122 people in total, including 23 healthy men and 14 men with ME/CFS. Energy production in the immune cells of people with ME/CFS was low and not geared towards responding to pathogens, Benjamin Heng said. Elevated plasma proteins were observed in people with ME/CFS.

Heng, a research fellow at the University of Sydney, said researchers generated a series of laboratory tests that could in future be used to help identify patients with ME/CFS. The study's authors are now working to validate their research. "This study provides compelling evidence that ME/CFS is associated with dysfunction across multiple biological systems, challenging its dismissal as a psychological disorder," the researchers wrote.

Richard Schloeffel, a clinical senior lecturer at the University of Sydney who co-authored the paper, said the condition's hallmark feature was post-exertional malaise. " He diagnosed Ella Engel with a very severe form of ME/CFS after she had seen nearly 40 different doctors and specialists.

Engel spent eight years without any outside visitors and four years without seeing her own brother due to extreme sensitivity to sound, light and touch.