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Scientists have developed a blood test that analyses epigenetic changes in immune cells. They say it could be used to diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome. <\/span>Credit: TEK Image\/Science Photo Library<\/span><\/p>\n Researchers who are seeking ways to diagnose a mysterious illness called chronic fatigue syndrome may have a new weapon in their armoury. In a study published in the Journal of Translational Medicine on 8 October1, scientists in the United Kingdom say they have found a way to distinguish epigenetic changes in the cells of people who have the condition, which is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis.<\/p>\n A debilitating long-term illness, ME\/CFS affects between 17 and 24 million people worldwide2, but these numbers are crude estimates because clinicians have long lacked reliable diagnostic tools for this poorly understood condition.<\/p>\n The results of the study show that the epigenetic test could be developed into a clinical biomarker for ME\/CFS, said Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, a researcher\u2013clinician at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, and lead author of the study, in a press release that was published alongside the paper. \u201cWith no definitive tests, many patients have gone undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for years.\u201d He added that the discovery \u201coffers the potential for a simple, accurate blood test to help confirm a diagnosis, which could lead to earlier support and more effective management\u201d.<\/p>\n Others in the field have cautiously welcomed the findings, but they point out that the study was small and that more work is needed to convert the technique into a clinical tool.<\/p>\n A reboot for chronic fatigue syndrome research<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The underlying mechanisms of ME\/CFS remain unclear, but evidence is building that one of the hallmarks of ME\/CFS is immune dysregulation. The authors had already developed an assay that screens for epigenetic changes in immune cells in the blood, which they used to identify epigenetic signatures for a range of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis3. The assay analyses the way DNA is folded inside peripheral blood mononuclear cells, a key part of the immune system.<\/p>\n The researchers tested whether the same assay could be used to screen for similar epigenetic changes to immune cells in the blood of 47 individuals with severe ME\/CFS, comparing the results with those from 61 healthy participants. The data showed that the assay achieved a 96% accuracy in diagnosing people with ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n The authors found a network of genomic changes that were strongly involved in immune and inflammatory signalling. The authors say that this is consistent with an immune-dysregulation signal in ME\/CFS, and underscores the strength of using these changes as biomarkers of the condition. And they say the changes they identified can be connected to specific regions of non-coding DNA, which can help to unpick the role of genetics in the condition and lead to a better mechanistic understanding.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s really cool they brought this method to the field,\u201d says Katie Glass, a molecular biologist who studies ME\/CFS at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. \u201cAs far as it being a biomarker, my enthusiasm would be pretty tempered because the cohort is very small and they looked at only very severe patients.\u201d<\/p>\n Biological underpinnings of chronic fatigue syndrome begin to emerge<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Many studies using various techniques to analyse everything from metabolites to free floating RNA in the blood have identified several apparent signatures of ME\/CFS, adds Glass, who previously had the condition but has now recovered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scientists have developed a blood test that analyses epigenetic changes in immune cells. They say it could be used to diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome. Credit: TEK Image\/Science Photo Library Researchers who are seeking ways to diagnose a mysterious illness called chronic fatigue syndrome may have a new weapon in their armoury. In a study published<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[1453,4548,8026,1679,384,8027,76],"class_list":{"0":"post-27127","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-blood","9":"tag-chronic","10":"tag-fatigue","11":"tag-proposed","12":"tag-scientists","13":"tag-syndrome","14":"tag-test"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Epigenetic markers<\/h2>\n