Saturday, March 27, 2010

A Light in the Darkness?

In January of this year, I wrote the article "A Picture is Worth a Million PWC words" here on my blog. It focused on the amazing CFS study performed by Dr. Alan and Kathy Light and team, as reported in "Blood Biomarkers for CFS". For those who may have missed it, here's a fast recap.

"According to Blood Biomarkers for CFS: A Light at the End of the Tunnel, "Alan R. Light, PhD, and his team at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center have identified genes that increase in activity following moderate exercise." The discovery was published in Journal of Pain. "

And here is the remarkable slide showing gene expression activity, following moderate exercise exertion, in the control group (Top of slide), the CFS group (Middle), and the bottom slide, although not apparent here, represents an MS group, and overlaying it, another control group, with the exercise increased markedly, to see if they could reproduce what the PWC data was revealing. The results were, and still are astonishing, and vindication for all PWC's who experience dismissal, ridicule and disdain for trying to explain to the world how ill we are.

(Click on the image to enlarge, and for further details see my original blog posting I mention above.)

So now, Cort from Phoenix Rising (and if I have failed to do so, let me just say Thank you Cort! You are another one of the titans of CFS advocacy that we need so very very much!) has written a followup on what is currently happening in Utah today, as a result of the Light's study, and the XMRV association with CFS/ME discovery by the Whittmore-Peterson Institute, the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic.

"We had heard that the three dozen or so people who participated in the Light’s fascinating exercise study were brought back to get tested for XMRV. What we didn’t know is that that study has recently been expanded - greatly. Since one thing researchers do not do is repeat negative studies, the only logical conclusion we can draw is that enough CFS patients tested positive for XMRV to make a greatly expanded and obviously much more expensive study worthwhile."

There may be some opinion of what this means on Cort's part, but he is Not without the facts to back it up, or he just wouldn't have 'gone there'. So, I invite you all to read his latest publication. It's good news, and so very welcome to us who have shouldered the stinging brunt of the quick and dirty so called 'replication' studies from the UK, and the Nederlands.