A blood test has achieved 96% accuracy in diagnosing the condition in a small study of individuals. What does the test detect, and is it a biomarker of the condition?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Adam, et. al., Journal of Translational Medicine<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers who are seeking ways to diagnose a mysterious illness called chronic fatigue syndrome might have a new weapon in their armoury. In a study published in the Journal of Translational Medicine<\/em> on 8 October1<\/a><\/sup>, scientists in the United Kingdom say they have found a way to distinguish epigenetic changes in the cells of people who have the condition, which is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A debilitating long-term illness, ME\/CFS affects between 17 million and 24 million people worldwide2<\/a><\/sup>, but these numbers are crude estimates because clinicians have long lacked reliable diagnostic tools for this poorly understood condition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The results of the study show that the epigenetic test could be developed into a clinical biomarker for ME\/CFS, said Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, a researcher\u2013clinician at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and lead author of the study, in a press release that was published alongside the paper. \u201cWith no definitive tests, many patients have gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years.\u201d He added that the discovery \u201coffers the potential for a simple, accurate blood test to help confirm a diagnosis, which could lead to earlier support and more effective management\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Others in the field have cautiously welcomed the findings, but they point out that the study was small and that more work is needed to convert the technique into a clinical tool.A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The underlying mechanisms of ME\/CFS remain unclear<\/a>, but evidence is building that one of the hallmarks of ME\/CFS is immune dysregulation. The authors had already developed an assay that screens for epigenetic changes in immune cells in the blood, which they used to identify epigenetic signatures for a range of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis3<\/a><\/sup>. The assay analyses the way DNA is folded inside peripheral blood mononuclear cells, a key part of the immune system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers tested whether the same assay could be used to screen for similar epigenetic changes to immune cells in the blood of 47 individuals with severe ME\/CFS, comparing the results with those from 61 healthy participants. The data showed that the assay achieved a 96% accuracy in diagnosing people with ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The authors found a network of genomic changes that were strongly involved in immune and inflammatory signalling. The authors say that this is consistent with an immune-dysregulation signal in ME\/CFS, and underscores the strength of using these changes as biomarkers of the condition. And they say the changes they identified can be connected to specific regions of non-coding DNA, which can help to unpick the role of genetics in the condition and lead to a better mechanistic understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really cool they brought this method to the field,\u201d says Katie Glass, a molecular biologist who studies ME\/CFS at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. \u201cAs far as it being a biomarker, my enthusiasm would be pretty tempered because the cohort is very small and they looked at only very severe patients.\u201dBiological underpinnings of chronic fatigue syndrome begin to emerge<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many studies using various techniques to analyse everything from metabolites to free-floating RNA in the blood have identified several apparent signatures of ME\/CFS, adds Glass, who previously had the condition but has now recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A blood test has achieved 96% accuracy in diagnosing the condition in a small study of individuals. What does the test detect, and is it a biomarker of the condition? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150,305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-epigenetic","category-me-cfs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13485"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13486,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13485\/revisions\/13486"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Epigenetic markers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n