It is a great thing that researchers like Drs Lipkin and Hornig are on the case with ME/CFS - as this type of science is also in their catchment of work. Check out this article by Carl Zimmer in the New York Times, from June 2014 In a First, Test of DNA Finds Root of Illness. Extracts: Mr. Slezak and other experts noted that it would take years of further research before such a test might become approved for regular use. But it could be immensely useful: Not only might it provide speedy diagnoses to critically ill patients, they said, it could lead to more effective treatments for maladies that can be hard to identify, such as Lyme disease. “About 60 percent of the time, we never make a diagnosis” in encephalitis, said Dr. Michael R. Wilson, a neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and an author of the new paper. “It’s frustrating whenever someone is doing poorly, but it’s especially frustrating when we can’t even tell the parents what the hell is going on.” For the last decade, researchers at the university have been working on methods for identifying pathogens based on their DNA. In 2003 Dr. Joseph DeRisi, a biochemist at the university, gained wide attention for using a gene chip called a microarray to identify the coronavirus causing SARS. The researchers’ latest method is called unbiased next-generation sequencing. To identify a pathogen, the researchers extract every scrap of DNA in a sample from a patient, which might be blood, cerebrospinal fluid or stool. Then they sift the genetic fragments for those belonging to pathogens. The technique already has proved valuable for investigating mysterious disease outbreaks, and a number of scientists have begun to hope it can be adapted to the diagnosis of individual patients’ infections. Rather than test for a suspected pathogen, a doctor could simply run a DNA test that could identify the culprit no matter what it is — virus, bacterium, fungus or parasite. nytimes/2014/06/05/health/in-first-quick-dna-test-diagnoses-a-boys-illness.html?_r=0
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 10:28:15 +0000
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