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.

With help from Schloeffel she went from having very severe ME/CFS to moderate ME/CFS. "Being part of research like this gives me hope that more effective treatments, and perhaps one day a cure, are within reach," Engel said. People with ME/CFS wait an average of six years for a diagnosis.

In Australia, about 250,000 people are living with ME/CFS. Women are about twice as likely to live with ME/CFS as men. Approximately 500,000 Australians have ME/CFS or long COVID that meets ME/CFS diagnostic criteria, Penelope McMillan said.

Emma Tippett, a Burnet Institute clinical research fellow, said the group size of 61 ME/CFS patients was significant for an in vitro study, where they are usually closer to 10 or 20 participants. "I was very happy to see this study, which confirmed some of the previous findings for ME/CFS as well as pushes forward some of our understanding," Tippett said.

Abc reported that while the study had limitations, including patients at different stages of disease and a slightly uneven number of male participants, independent experts described the findings as a step forward in understanding the biological processes underlying the illness.

Its authors hope validation of the laboratory tests could lead to earlier and easier diagnosis for a condition that currently relies on exclusion of other possibilities.