A reader sent me some lab results that she wanted me to look at. I am not a MD — I am a statistician and I think logically (with a working brain).

When I receive lab results, I have only one question that I will look at:

• Are these results typical of those of CFS/IBS?

If they are — end of story.  If not, then I will raise concerns about misdiagnosis.

Example

The following is a “cookbook” analysis that people can do for themselves (or have a signficant other do for them). You do not need to understand the biology — we are just looking for pattern matches!

To understand some of the biology, click on the measure, this will take you to PubMed Health which provide simple short explanation.

• High Neutrophil (Absolute count, but only slightly  high in %)
  • PubMed Query:  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Neutrophils+chronic+fatigue+syndrome
  • 21+ hits
  • Scanning them “Significant co-expression of CD14+ monocyte with CD16+ neutrophil (p = 0.01)” [2008]
• High Monocytes (Absolute count, but not %)
  • PubMed Query: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Monocytes+chronic+fatigue+syndrome
  • 30+ hits
• High Lymphocytes (only as %) – B cells and T cells
  • PubMed Query: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Lymphocytes+chronic+fatigue+syndrome+elevated
  • 252+ hits
  • Scanning: “elevated proportion of lymphocytes” [2010]
• Cholesterol
  • PubMed Query: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Cholesterol+chronic+fatigue+syndrome
  • 34+ hits
  • Scanning ” Pathway abnormalities included sphingolipid, phospholipid, purine, cholesterol, microbiome, pyrroline-5-carboxylate, riboflavin, branch chain amino acid, peroxisomal, and mitochondrial metabolism” Metabolic features of chronic fatigue syndrome[2016].
• C-reactive protein (CRP)
  • PubMed Query: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=C-reactive+protein++chronic+fatigue+syndrome
  • 28+ hits
  • Scanning: High-sensitive C-Reactive Protein as a Marker for Inflammation in Irritable Bowel Syndrome[2016].

Bottom Line

All of the measures outside of the normal range are those see with CFS/IBS. In short, the lab results are normal for a CFS/IBS patient.

How to correct them? That is what MDs and researchers have been trying to do for 30 years without clear success. My model says these are byproducts of the microbiome shift. Many of the above are infection responses. I suspect that the problem has been assuming that the infection is in the blood or tissue instead of the microbiome. Metabolites (chemicals) from the bad microbiome bacteria crosses over into the body and triggers the body’s response. One example showing how a prebiotic can change one of the above high measures

• “Baseline C-reactive protein was reduced following prebiotic Bimuno-galactooligosaccharide” [2016]