Journal of IiMER far, about half have uploaded the gene data. But we need several thousand to ask the most important questions. So link everyone you know to the website: http://www.nova.edu/nim/research/mecfsgenes.html or email: MECFSGenes@nova.edu. And feel good about this study as it is proof that patient driven, patient sponsored research can lead the way to new treatments. The Blue Ribbon Fellowship, provided by the Blue Ribbon Foundation and the Wisconsin ME/CFS Association, sponsored fellowships for medical students to create the platform and the social media outreach campaign. Patients and advocates helped launch this study and continue to help us promote it. And of course patients and advocates are the participants needed to make this successful. If anyone in the patient community would use their social media skills to get the word out, we could do something truly remarkable: through your efforts partnered with this new generation of physician scientists, answer questions that have been waiting to be answered for far too long. Dr Jakob Theorell Jakob Theorell started his medical training at Karolinska Institutet in 2007. He is currently enrolled in the MD-PhD Program at Karolinska Institutet. He works in the Yenan Bryceson Group in Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm. His work focuses on understanding the mechanisms of disease in patients suffering from chronic immunodeficiency syndromes. The Yenan Bryceson Group is based at the Center for Infectious Medicine and employs a wide range of techniques including multiparameter flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, live-cell imaging, next-generation sequencing, and biochemical techniques. To gain clinical and scientific insights into human diseases, we collaborate closely with clinicians at Karolinska Institutet, across Scandinavia and the rest of the world. Abstract: Myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a debilitating disorder linked to diverse intracellular infections. Cytotoxic lymphocytes combat intracellular infections. Multiple studies have investigated cytotoxic lymphocyte phenotype and function in ME/CFS, but their specific role in this disorder remains to be established. Prompted by advances in the understanding of defects in lymphocyte cytotoxicity, we aimed to re-assess the role of cytotoxic lymphocytes in ME/CFS, especially for biomarker purposes. To this end, 48 patients fulfilling both Fukuda and Canada criteria for ME/CFS from two independent cohorts were investigated. The phenotype and function of cytotoxic lymphocytes in frozen and thawed PBMC was evaluated by flow cytometry, one cohort at the time. Results were compared to values obtained from simultaneous analysis of cells from age- and sex matched healthy controls. Consistent differences between patients and controls were not found in cytotoxic lymphocyte numbers, cytotoxic granule content, activation status, exocytotic capacity, target cell killing, cytokine production or reprogrammed NK cell expansions. No clear subgroups were identified in unsupervised www.investinme.org Page 71 of 82
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