By K. Kimberly McCleary, President & CEO
We are delighted to announce that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has made a new award totalling $1,009,125 to support biomarker research led by Kathleen Light, PhD, of the University of Utah. The pilot study showing gene expression changes after modest exercise was supported by the CFIDS Association. The most recent set of results was published on May 26, 2011 in the Journal of Internal Medicine.
The new award to Dr. Light’s team is a three-year grant that will enable them to add 140 more subjects to their protocol that has demonstrated great promise to distinguish CFS from fibromyalgia (without co-occurring CFS), multiple sclerosis, primary depression and prostate cancer, conditions marked by substantial fatigue and/or pain. Dr. Light and her husband, Alan R. Light, PhD, study CFS and fibromyalgia patients referred by clinical collaborator Lucinda Bateman, MD.
Using blood samples collected at rest and then at four time points after a moderate exercise challenge, CFS patients showed both rapid and sustained increases in expression of four genes. The new award will enable them to test whether the gene expression measures meet standard criteria for diagnostic biomarkers in CFS as a whole and in key subgroups. The expanded study will also lay a foundation for further translational research on dysregulated pathways that may initiate, maintain or worsen symptoms of CFS, and provide potential targets for effective therapeutic intervention.
Dr. Light is the third Association-funded researcher to have recently secured additional funding to extend her or his work. Dr. Gordon Broderick has leveraged pilot funding from the Association into $3.5 million in grants from the NIH and Department of Defense. Dr. Dikoma Shungu’s group will collaborate with Dr. Benjamin Natelson on a new study of neurological deficits just awarded to Beth Israel Medical Center by NIH, with support of $379,000.
An update on these and other outcomes of Association-funded research will be published in the next issue of our print publication, SolveCFS, at press now. To receive a complimentary copy, please send your name and mailing address to cfids@cfids.org with “SOLVECFS” in the subject line.
Read more about the Lights’ research in a summary of the latest publication, “Exercise Challenge Reveals Potential CFS Biomarkers.” Dr. Alan Light describes the term and criteria used to evaluate biomarkers in this guest post, “Shedding Light on Biomarkers.” You can also listen to Dr. Kathy Light describe the group’s research in a webinar recorded last fall, “Expanding Research: Building On Your Investment.”
[Update: The Sept. 21, 2011 edition of The Daily Utah Chronicle reported news of the Lights' grant: http://bit.ly/pCu27z]
K. Kimberly McCleary has served as the Association’s chief staff executive since 1991.
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MAKE IT RAIN, BABY!
Sorry, I just got a little excited there for a second.
We share your enthusiasm, Anne!
OH Thank God!!!! I dont know how much longer I can hold on and Dr Bateman I have followed your work and makes me so happy you are apart of this–I have learned to trust you and your reasons. I would volunteer to be apart of any study I live in southern Illinois though—if I can help please contact me on fb I dont have the energy to keep up with e mail or phone —Thank you all sooooo much, Joann Jordan
Very encouraging news. It is great to hear $10 million here, a million there, another million here for ME/CFS research. And to know the researchers understand the severity of the disease and already know where they need to look next to further unravel the mysteries of ME/CFS.
Thank you to the Association for funding solid research that produced such good results that even in a terrible financial climate, was able to get financed.
This is good news. Have read about the Lights’ studies on changes in genetic expression after exercise in people with CFIDS. And also of family connections to this disease. Hopefully, their further studies fit the standards you mention above. (I already forgot the formulation … CFIDS’ memory loss — people should study this.)
Have seen a bit about Dr. Natelson’s study and findings of different proteins in the spinal fluid of people with CFIDS, Lyme and good health.
Don’t know of Dr. Broderick’s studies. What are they?
It’s good news. As far as I’m concerned — and so are others with this disease — it’s past time to thumb our noses at the naysayers, as the “it’s all in your head” so-called experts, at the CFIDS deniers, as it were.
We all know this disease is a physical illness, I say as my arm and leg muscles are killing me, as I can barely lift my arms to type. And when will some expert figure out what can alleviate this excruciating muscle pain?
And can someone point me to the right articles which will inform friends of mine what this disease does to those of us with it?
Thank you for this work. I just hope these studies all work out to help us.
This is exactly the direction of research that we need. Thrilled to hear about this!
This is good news for everyone with CFIDS I am sure, congratulations and good luck.
Hooray! Horray! “I’m soooo xxxxcited and I just can’t hide it”!!!
We ALL are getting closer and closer in finding a treatment to this monsterous illness. Yes! It has taken many, many years, but just think we are getting 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year closer to answers!
THANK YOU CFIDS Association, researchers, NIH, CDC, Doctors, and all others who contribute their time, energy, focus, motivation, dedication, etc. in finding a treatment and/or cure for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Your hardwork never,ever goes unnoticed!
I sincerely appreciate all you do, and PLEASE don’t ever give up until we have treatments for this ever-changing illness. You have millions of people who depend on you so much.
Thank you again!
Natalie
Thank you, Natalie!
Great news about some of the most exciting ME/CFS research and congratulations to the CAA for funding 3 researchers that got NIH grants – an excellent track record of success. Kudo’s to Suzanne Vernon for picking such excellent projects. Its great to see the NIH reward good projects.
Thanks, Cort. Just to clarify, the proposals received in response to the 2008 Request for Applications were thoroughly reviewed for scientific merit by peers from their specific areas/disciplines and then for strategic merit by a separate review panel. The Executive Committee based its final funding decisions on the scores from both levels of review. It’s a very rigourous process that will be followed again for the applications we anticipate receiving by month’s end in response to our latest Request for Applications that focuses on diagnostics and treatment research.
Having suffered Gulf War Illness for 21 years, I would appreciate being able to print for mainstream doctors and “other narcissists” a copy of a single peer-reviewed, published study that proves pain from primary or clinical depression is completely different from Chronic Fatigue pain. Gulf War Illness (GWI) includes about 20 different diagnoses, CFS-CFIDS being one of them. GWI harbors 4 different types of pain, or more. Half are untreatable, unmanageable pain in brain/spinal column fluid and intestines. Unlike clinically depressed patients, I don’t EVER get any sleep, not even with prescription sleep medications. I don’t produce measurable cortisol. Cortisol is the adrenal hormone produced only during REM4 sleep, and over-produced in depressed patients that could sleep their lives away. I have never had the spare tire around the middle, as so many depressed patients do for overproduction of cortisol. And I can’t just pop a pill and go on about my work, oblivious to everyone around me, as self-absorbed, clinically depressed patients do. If MRIs or scans of adrenals were available, I am betting that GWI adrenals are shriveled or atrophied, while depressed patients’ adrenals are enlarged, as has been indicated in other published bio-marker studies.