Lombardi, de Meirleir en collega's hebben onderzoek verricht naar 77 cytokines in het serum

van 67 mensen met ME, 37 mensen met Golfoorlogsyndroom (GWS) en 42 gezonde "proefkonijnen".

ME-patienten wijken met maar liefst 42 cytokines af van gezonde proefpersonen.

Alhoewel bij GWS-patienten ook afwijkende cytokine-niveaus werden vastgesteld,

weken die niveaus in verhouding veel minder af van het beeld bij gezonde proefpersonen.

De meest revante afwijkingen in ME (CVS) en GWS zijn in onderstaande tabel weergegeven.

Het totaalplaatje van ME (verhoogde niveaus Th1- én Th2-cytokines) past niet in "het standaardbeeld".

De samenvattende tabel op basis van de tekst van het volledige studierapport:

Cytokine expression provides clues to the pathophysiology of

Gulf War illness and myalgic encephalomyelitis.

Cytokine. 2015 Mar: 72(1): 1–8. doi:10.1016/j.cyto.2014.11.019.

SF Khaiboullina, KL de Meirleir, S Rawat, GS Berk, RS Gaynor-Berk,

T Mijatovic, N Blatt, AA Rizvanov, SG Young, VC Lombardi.

Highlights

• Gulf War illness (GWI) is characterized by a Th1/Th17 shift.
• Th1, Th2 and inflammatory cytokines characterize myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME).
• Cytokine importance by Random Forest were IL-7, IL-4, TNFα, IL-13, and IL-17F.
• GWI and ME have distinct cytokine profiles despite similar symptomology.

Abstract

Gulf War illness (GWI) is a chronic disease of unknown etiology

characterized by persistent symptoms

such as cognitive impairment, unexplained fatigue,

pervasive pain, headaches, and gastrointestinal abnormalities.

Current reports suggest that as many as 200,000 veterans

who served in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War were afflicted.

Several potential triggers of GWI have been proposed

including chemical exposure, toxins, vaccines, and unknown infectious agents.

However, a definitive cause of GWI has not been identified and

a specific biological marker that can consistently delineate the disease has not been defined.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) is a diseasewith similar and overlapping symptomology, and

subjects diagnosed with GWI typically fit the diagnostic criteria for ME.

For these reasons, GWI is often considered a subgroup of ME.

To explore this possibility and

identify immune parameters that may help to understand GWI pathophysiology,

we measured 77 serum cytokines in subjects with GWI and

compared these data to that of subjects with ME as well as healthy controls.

Our analysis identified a group of cytokines

that identified ME and GWI cases with sensitivities of 92.5% and 64.9%, respectively.

The five most significant cytokines in decreasing order of importance

were IL-7, IL-4, TNFα, IL-13, and IL-17F.

When delineating GWI and ME cases from healthy controls,

the observed specificity was only 33.3%,

suggesting that with respect to cytokine expression,

GWI cases resemble control subjects to a greater extent

than ME cases across a number of parameters.

These results imply that serum cytokines are representative of

ME pathology to a greater extent than GWI and

further suggest that the two diseases have distinct immune profiles

despite their overlapping symptomology.

Keywords

Cytokines; Gulf War illness; Myalgic encephalomyelitis; Cytokines; Random forest: interleukin-7

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043466614006024