A narrative review on the similarities and dissimilarities between myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (me/cfs) and sickness behavior

It is of importance whether myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a variant of sickness behavior. The latter is induced by acute infections/injury being principally mediated through proinflammatory cytokines. Sickness is a beneficial behavioral response that serves to enhance recovery, conserves energy and plays a role in the resolution of inflammation. There are behavioral/symptomatic similarities (for example, fatigue, malaise, hyperalgesia) and dissimilarities (gastrointestinal symptoms, anorexia and weight loss) between sickness and ME/CFS. While sickness is an adaptive response induced by proinflammatory cytokines, ME/CFS is a chronic, disabling disorder, where the pathophysiology is related to activation of immunoinflammatory and oxidative pathways and autoimmune responses. While sickness behavior is a state of energy conservation, which plays a role in combating pathogens, ME/CFS is a chronic disease underpinned by a state of energy depletion. While sickness is an acute response to infection/injury, the trigger factors in ME/CFS are less well defined and encompass acute and chronic infections, as well as inflammatory or autoimmune diseases. It is concluded that sickness behavior and ME/CFS are two different conditions

Mechanisms and therapeutic applications of electromagnetic therapy in Parkinson's disease

© 2015 Vadalà et al. Electromagnetic therapy is a non-invasive and safe approach for the management of several pathological conditions including neurodegenerative diseases. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative pathology caused by abnormal degeneration of dopaminergic neurons in the ventral tegmental area and substantia nigra pars compacta in the midbrain resulting in damage to the basal ganglia. Electromagnetic therapy has been extensively used in the clinical setting in the form of transcranial magnetic stimulation, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, high-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation and pulsed electromagnetic field therapy which can also be used in the domestic setting. In this review, we discuss the mechanisms and therapeutic applications of electromagnetic therapy to alleviate motor and non-motor deficits that characterize Parkinson's disease

Hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis hormones and cortisol in both menstrual phases of women with chronic fatigue syndrome and effect of depressive mood on these hormones

BACKGROUND: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disease which defined as medically unexplained, disabling fatigue of 6 months or more duration and often accompanied by several of a long list of physical complaints. We aimed to investigate abnormalities of hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axis hormones and cortisol concentrations in premenopausal women with CFS and find out effects of depression rate on these hormones. METHODS: We examined follicle stimulating hormone (FSH), luteinizing hormone (LH), estradiol, progesterone and cortisol concentrations in 43 premenopausal women (mean age: 32.86 ± 7.11) with CFS and compared matched 35 healthy controls (mean age: 31.14 ± 6.19). Patients were divided according to menstrual cycle phases (follicular and luteal) and compared with matched phase controls. Depression rate was assessed by Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and patients with high BDI scores were compared to patients with low BDI scores. RESULTS: There were no significant differences in FSH, LH, estradiol and progesterone levels in both of menstrual phases of patients versus controls. Cortisol levels were significantly lower in patients compared to controls. There were no significant differences in all hormone levels in patients with high depression scores versus patients with low depression scores. CONCLUSION: In spite of high depression rate, low cortisol concentration and normal HPG axis hormones of both menstrual phases are detected in premenopausal women with CFS. There is no differentiation between patients with high and low depression rate in all hormone levels. Depression condition of CFS may be different from classical depression and evaluation of HPG and HPA axis should be performed for understanding of pathophysiology of CFS and planning of treatment

Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome performed worse than controls in a controlled repeated exercise study despite a normal oxidative phosphorylation capacity

Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the possibility that a decreased mitochondrial ATP synthesis causes muscular and mental fatigue and plays a role in the pathophysiology of the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME).Methods: Female patients (n = 15) and controls (n = 15) performed a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) by cycling at a continuously increased work rate till maximal exertion. The CPET was repeated 24 h later. Before the tests, blood was taken for the isolation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), which were processed in a special way to preserve their oxidative phosphorylation, which was tested later in the presence of ADP and phosphate in permeabilized cells with glutamate, malate and malonate plus or minus the complex I inhibitor rotenone, and succinate with rotenone plus or minus the complex II inhibitor malonate in order to measure the ATP production via Complex I and II, respectively. Plasma CK was determined as a surrogate measure of a decreased oxidative phosphorylation in muscle, since the previous finding that in a group of patients with external ophthalmoplegia the oxygen consumption by isolated muscle mitochondria correlated negatively with plasma creatine kinase, 24 h after exercise.Results: At both exercise tests the patients reached the anaerobic threshold and the maximal exercise at a much lower oxygen consumption than the controls and this worsened in the second test. This implies an increase of lactate, the product of anaerobic glycolysis, and a decrease of the mitochondrial ATP production in the patients. In the past this was also found in patients with defects in the mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation. However the oxidative phosphorylation in PBMC was similar in CFS/ME patients and controls. The plasma creatine kinase levels before and 24 h after exercise were low in patients and controls, suggesting normality of the muscular mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation.Conclusion: The decrease in mitochondrial ATP synthesis in the CFS/ME patients is not caused by a defect in the enzyme complexes catalyzing oxidative phosphorylation, but in another factor

Model-Based Therapeutic Correction of Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal Axis Dysfunction

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is a major system maintaining body homeostasis by regulating the neuroendocrine and sympathetic nervous systems as well modulating immune function. Recent work has shown that the complex dynamics of this system accommodate several stable steady states, one of which corresponds to the hypocortisol state observed in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). At present these dynamics are not formally considered in the development of treatment strategies. Here we use model-based predictive control (MPC) methodology to estimate robust treatment courses for displacing the HPA axis from an abnormal hypocortisol steady state back to a healthy cortisol level. This approach was applied to a recent model of HPA axis dynamics incorporating glucocorticoid receptor kinetics. A candidate treatment that displays robust properties in the face of significant biological variability and measurement uncertainty requires that cortisol be further suppressed for a short period until adrenocorticotropic hormone levels exceed 30% of baseline. Treatment may then be discontinued, and the HPA axis will naturally progress to a stable attractor defined by normal hormone levels. Suppression of biologically available cortisol may be achieved through the use of binding proteins such as CBG and certain metabolizing enzymes, thus offering possible avenues for deployment in a clinical setting. Treatment strategies can therefore be designed that maximally exploit system dynamics to provide a robust response to treatment and ensure a positive outcome over a wide range of conditions. Perhaps most importantly, a treatment course involving further reduction in cortisol, even transient, is quite counterintuitive and challenges the conventional strategy of supplementing cortisol levels, an approach based on steady-state reasoning

Meta-Review of Metanalytic Studies with Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) for the Treatment of Major Depression

BACKGROUND: Major Depression (MD) and treatment-resistant depression (TRD) are worldwide leading causes of disability and therapeutic strategies for these impairing and prevalent conditions include pharmacological augmentation strategies and brain stimulation techniques. In this perspective, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a non-invasive brain stimulation technique with a favorable profile of tolerability which, despite being recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of patients with medication-refractory unipolar depression, still raises some doubts about most effective parameters of stimulation.METHODS: A literature search was performed using PubMed for the years 2001 through February 2011 in order to review meta-analytic studies assessing efficacy and safety issues for rTMS in depressive disorders. Fifteen meta-analyses were identified and critically discussed in order to provide an updated and comprehensive overview of the topic with specific emphasis on potentially optimal parameters of stimulation.RESULTS: First meta-analyses on the efficacy of rTMS for the treatment of MD and TRD have shown mixed results. On the other hand, more recent meta-analytic studies seem to support the antidepressant efficacy of the technique to a greater extent, also in light of longer periods of stimulation (e.g. > 2 weeks).CONCLUSION: rTMS seems to be an effective and safe brain stimulation technique for the treatment of medication refractory depression. Nevertheless, further studies are needed to better define specific stimulation-related issues, such as duration of treatment as well as durability of effects and predictors of response

A chronic fatigue syndrome – related proteome in human cerebrospinal fluid

BACKGROUND: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), Persian Gulf War Illness (PGI), and fibromyalgia are overlapping symptom complexes without objective markers or known pathophysiology. Neurological dysfunction is common. We assessed cerebrospinal fluid to find proteins that were differentially expressed in this CFS-spectrum of illnesses compared to control subjects. METHODS: Cerebrospinal fluid specimens from 10 CFS, 10 PGI, and 10 control subjects (50 μl/subject) were pooled into one sample per group (cohort 1). Cohort 2 of 12 control and 9 CFS subjects had their fluids (200 μl/subject) assessed individually. After trypsin digestion, peptides were analyzed by capillary chromatography, quadrupole-time-of-flight mass spectrometry, peptide sequencing, bioinformatic protein identification, and statistical analysis. RESULTS: Pooled CFS and PGI samples shared 20 proteins that were not detectable in the pooled control sample (cohort 1 CFS-related proteome). Multilogistic regression analysis (GLM) of cohort 2 detected 10 proteins that were shared by CFS individuals and the cohort 1 CFS-related proteome, but were not detected in control samples. Detection of ≥1 of a select set of 5 CFS-related proteins predicted CFS status with 80% concordance (logistic model). The proteins were α-1-macroglobulin, amyloid precursor-like protein 1, keratin 16, orosomucoid 2 and pigment epithelium-derived factor. Overall, 62 of 115 proteins were newly described. CONCLUSION: This pilot study detected an identical set of central nervous system, innate immune and amyloidogenic proteins in cerebrospinal fluids from two independent cohorts of subjects with overlapping CFS, PGI and fibromyalgia. Although syndrome names and definitions were different, the proteome and presumed pathological mechanism(s) may be shared