Today, we are excited to share a new publication from Christopher Armstrong, PhD, and colleagues: “Unravelling shared mechanisms: insights from recent ME/CFS research to illuminate long COVID pathologies.” This comprehensive review is proudly supported by OMF Australia.
From the Desk of Christopher Armstrong, PhD,
Director of the Melbourne ME/CFS Collaboration
I am proud to present our review paper in Cell Trends in Molecular Medicine, which delves into the recent research world of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) and its potential insights into understanding Long COVID (LC).
To complete this review, we assessed over 500 ME/CFS reviews and research articles released over the past five years and there were approximately 300 research papers with appropriate sample sizes that we used to formulate this review. We sub-categorized the publications into research areas and ultimately chose five areas to focus on within the review. This choice was based on their relevance to LC and the breadth of research.
The major areas covered include:
- Metabolic abnormalities
- Immune dysfunction
- Vascular pathologies
- Central nervous system dysfunction
- Gut dysbiosis
Although we couldn’t include all the papers we reviewed, it was heartening to see the quality and quantity of research in ME/CFS over the past years. The field is rapidly expanding, with fresh research and new names emerging amidst the wealth of published articles.
As part of the review, we produced a simple cyclical model that brings the major research areas together to highlight that any combination of these areas can and likely do interact to create an altered physiological state underpinning the disease. Individual patients are unlikely to present the full array anomalies but likely experience enough to sustain a cycle or loop, thereby creating a model that can account for the heterogeneity of the disease.
Our simple model, though basic in nature, could potentially provide a valuable perspective for understanding the complexities of both ME/CFS and Long COVID. The paper underscores the shared clinical similarities between the two conditions, offering a unique perspective on disease pathologies and their interconnected influence.
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