Spinal fluid, proteins, and differential diagnosis

New ME/CFS study! From The Washington Post:

The new study analyzed spinal fluid from 25 of those chronic Lyme patients, 43 people diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and 11 healthy people. Using a special high-powered technology, researchers detected more than 2,500 proteins in each group.

More important, they found clear sets of proteins - hundreds each - unique to each disease, said Dr. Steven Schutzer of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, who led the work.

In other words, if this study pans out, doctors will have an easy way to tell whether a patient has ME/CFS, Lyme, or neither of those diseases.

That's a big deal. ME/CFS shares a bunch of symptoms with chronic Lyme disease, leading physicians to frequently misdiagnose one for the other. Unfortunately, the treatment differs. People with chronic Lyme may benefit from industrial-strength antibiotics. However, said antibiotics can have nasty side-effects, so you really don't want to take them unless you actually do have Lyme.

Another virus in the news

A recent study reveals that in certain individuals, human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) can insert itself into human chromosomes.

Full story at RedOrbit.

The study could have interesting implications for ME/CFS, as many people with this disease have high titers of HHV-6. Too early to tell, but something to keep an eye on.

XMRV news: Another non-replication study

Another study has failed to detect XMRV in ME/CFS patients. I was pretty depressed about the news until I found out that, like the other follow-up studies, Kupperveld et al. used much broader patient criteria than the original Whittemore Peterson study. (Translation: their subjects may not actually have ME/CFS.) They also didn't use the WPI's more extensive testing methods.

You can read a more in-depth analysis from Stephen Ralph at Dancing with the Sandman.

So, no longer depressed. Just frustrated. Even if the WPI study appears more credible than the others thus far, we still need serious replication attempts by somebody other than WPI.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Failure to replicate: The WPI's take

The Whittemore Peterson Institute has finally issued a statement about a recent UK study that failed to detect XMRV in ME/CFS patients.

By "finally," I mean three days after said UK study was published. Three days is probably a reasonable length of time, given the need to review the results, and given that they're probably busy with other things over there. Three days feels very long, though, when you've been clinging to the hope that maybe there will be a cure for ME/CFS in our lifetime after all. Three days feels very long you fear that hope might be snatched away.

(A summary for those just tuning in: ME/CFS is a debilitating disease that causes chronic pain, crushing exhaustion, and significantly shortened lifespan. In October of last year, the Whittemore Peterson Institute discovered a link between this disease and a retrovirus called XMRV. The results of the most recent study failed to confirm the WPI's results.)

WPI's statement begins, "WPI is aware of the recent UK study that was unable to detect the presence of XMRV in any CFS patient samples."

The wording made me smile. "WPI is aware ..." as if they could possibly have missed the news. Obviously I'm not the only person who's been impatiently awaiting their interpretation. They must have been getting hammered.

Anyway, their full response is here: www.wpinstitute.org/news/news_current.html. Among other things, they point out that the new UK study didn't actually attempt replication. They used different techniques and technologies, which the WPI claims are insufficient to detect XMRV.

So, hope restored for the time being. It's strange, though. The UK lab almost certainly wasn't trying to manipulate the data to get negative results. Why did they not attempt a real replication study?

XMRV news: A failure to replicate

A new study in Retrovirology did not detect XMRV in patients with ME/CFS.

Our study failed to replicate the results of the US study despite using what we believe to be a more sensitive test. We found no association between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome. However, chronic fatigue syndrome may encompass a spectrum of different conditions providing a possible explanation for this discrepancy ... Replication is an important part of the scientific method and, as the initial findings have not yet been replicated, I think it will be important to develop standardised samples and assays for XMRV that can be rapidly tested by different laboratories around the world.

It doesn't seem as though this research group has an agenda—one of the researchers is Jonathan Kerr, who led a study that revealed genomic differences between people with ME/CFS and without. So, the news is disappointing, but we can hope the scientific community will continue to study XMRV and untangle the conflicting results.

Onward.

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down

New research suggests that if you get people to pay attention to music with lyrics about helping people, they'll be more likely to help people. A Psychology Today blog has the juicy details.

Makes me wonder if I've been too subtle in my attempts at musical persuasion. I've written a few prosocial songs, to use the social psych lingo, but never anything that comes out and says, "Hey, be nicer to people! Right now!"

The study only compared neutral songs to those that blatantly call for help. They'd need to do further research to find out if a less blatant approach works too. I hope it does. Because otherwise, I'm going to have to try my hand at a "be nicer to people" song, and I don't know how to do that without sounding like a public service announcement.

Music: good for what ails you

Interesting gig this afternoon. Javalinas Coffee and Friends hosted an event called Music and Your Health, which they described as "a unique lecture and musical therapy experience." The lineup consisted of three doctors, two of whom made up a duo; a nutrition consultant; an author of two books on nutrition; and us. The doctors dispensed health-related information between songs, including connections between music and brain waves. The nutrition experts briefly talked about their experience in the field.

We were invited because of "Everybody Knows About Me," our song about living with undiagnosed myalgic encephalomyelitis, and I gave a slightly longer introduction than usual to that song before we played it. Other than that, the only thing we had to say regarding music and health came from a couple of studies I happened to read about. (See here and here.)

Me: "According to recent research, music you like can actually lower your blood pressure. They also found that music you don't like can raise your blood pressure, so ..."

Ron: "Wow, I really hope you like us."

Me: "Yeah, I hope we don't suck."

Going by the audience's response, I'm happy to report that Cinder Bridge had a positive effect on blood vessel function today.

Things I think about when I don't monitor my thoughts

Something else occurred to me after reading about the study where they observed the neural activities of jazz musicians. For those of you who didn't bother to read the whole article, the way they observed said neural activities was to stick the musicians in an MRI scanner, then have them either improvise or perform something they knew. Which means the researchers had to fashion a device that allowed their subjects to play whilst inside.

If I ever need an MRI done, I want them to use THAT scanner. Being able to noodle around on a keyboard would provide a welcome distraction from whatever medical procedure they had to do. It also might yield some provocative creations.

"I love that new piece you composed. It's so full of passion and intensity."

"Thank you! I call it 'AGGGHHHHHH LET ME OUT LET ME OUT!!!'"

Lyrics vs. the prefrontal cortex

DeppityBob recently sent along an article about how jazz musicians' prefrontal cortexes wind down when they improvise:

Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have found that, when jazz musicians are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one’s performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated.

Go here for the rest.

This sheds some light on why creating music feels like tapping into some mystical well of infinite possibility, whereas writing lyrics feels like rolling up my sleeves and getting to work. It's not that language can't exist in that same mystical, infinite well. It's that my brain plays guardian at the gate, refusing to let the words through because they might not be exactly right.