This is a review of clinically interesting items — posts on politics, speculation are excluded.

• “Individuals within the more severe cluster [of POTS] had significantly more brain fog at the beginning and end of the survey when compared to cluster two[less severe].” An assessment of fatigue in patients with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome[Oct 2015].

• “There was little evidence of differences in outcomes between the randomised treatment groups at long-term follow-up.” Rehabilitative treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome: long-term follow-up from the PACE trial [Oct 2015].
  • i.e. CBT, SMC, GET,APT have short term effects (i.e. possibly Placebo effects) but are not effective long term
• “IL-1β was significantly reduced in severe compared with moderate CFS/ME patients. IL-6 was significantly decreased in moderate CFS/ME patients compared with healthy controls and severe CFS/ME patients…Serum IL-7 and IL-8 were significantly higher in the severe CFS/ME group compared with healthy controls and moderate CFS/ME patients. IFN-γ was significantly increased in severe CFS/ME patients compared with moderately affected patients.” Serum Immune Proteins in Moderate and Severe Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Patients[Oct 2015] [Full Text]
• “Severe CFS/ME patients differed from controls and moderate CFS/ME patients over time and expressed significant alterations in iNKT cell phenotypes, CD8(+)T cell markers, NK cell receptors and γδT cells at 6 months.” [Sep 2015]

• Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) is different in children compared to in adults: a study of UK and Dutch clinical cohorts[Oct 2015].

• Increased risk of chronic fatigue syndrome in patients with migraine: A retrospective cohort study [Oct 2015].

  • This suggests that migraines may be an indicator of the start of a dysfunction leading to CFS in some patients, see “evidence linking the migraine brain to various GI disorders” [What the Gut Can Teach Us About Migraine Jul 2015]
• Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is associated with pandemic influenza infection, but not with an adjuvanted pandemic influenza vaccine [Oct 2016].
• • Getting CFS after a “flu-like” illness may actually have been the flu — with the CFS being the failure of the gut bacteria alterations caused by the flu returning to normal.
• “CFS patients with the 5-HTT SS or SLG genotype had worse 30 weeks outcome than CFS patients with the 5-HTT LALG, SLA or LALA genotype.” [Oct 2015]
• “The results suggest that patients with CFS/FM are more disabled, have more cognitive complaints, and improve more slowly over time than patients with CFS alone. Specific cognitive difficulties are related to worse functional status, which supports the addition of cognitive difficulties to the FM case criteria.” [Oct 2015]
• “Associations Between Cognitive Performance and Pain in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Comorbidity with Fibromyalgia Does Matter.[Sep 2015]”
• “Dysregulation of acetylcholine and adrenergic signalling could also explain various clinical symptoms of CFS.” [Sep 2015]
• “The results from this pilot study suggest that NK cells from CFS/ME and MS patients may have undergone increased differentiation in response to external stimuli which may affect different mechanisms in the NK cell cytotoxic activity pathway.’ [Sep 2015]

What was interesting..

• First item: migraine may be cause by a gut bacteria dysfunction and increases the odds of getting CFS.
• Second item: That flu was associated with CFS (but not the vaccine) which agrees with prediction from my model. The vaccine would produce much less gut bacteria alteration than having the flu.