October 2020 – Cornell Center for Enervating NeuroImmune Disease

Betsy Keller presents at Swedish RME annual ME/CFS conference 2020

At the Swedish RME annual ME/CFS conference on Oct. 14, 2020, Clinical Core Co-Director, Dr. Betsy Keller, presented virtually on post-exertional malaise (PEM). Keller goes into detail on PEM by covering what it is, ways to assess impairment due to PEM, and strategies to minimize PEM. Her full talk “PEM: Strategies for determining and managing the cardinal symptom of ME/CFS” can be viewed below and is also available on YouTube here.

For an English version of Swedish RME’s website visit this link.

Our first EV publication finds disturbances in cytokine networks

Center investigator Dr. Ludovic Giloteaux is lead author of a new publication out in the Journal of Translational Medicine. The paper describes cytokine profiling in extracellular vesicles (EVs) in ME/CFS. The study specifically looks at EVs from the plasma of 70 participants, 35 of which are diagnosed with ME/CFS and compared with 35 healthy controls. Both female and male participants were included in this work. Dr. Jesus Castro-Marrero visited our lab from Spain on a fellowship to contribute to the project.

One key finding of the study is the noted disturbances in cytokine networks.. Disturbances in these cytokine networks were seen in both plasma and EVs, and provides further evidence of immune dysregulation in ME/CFS. We are using information from this work to inform our further studies on EVs from blood collected before and after an exercise challenge. Stay tuned for future publications from our Center on this topic.

NYSDOH Panel Session on ME/CFS in Age of COVID-19

Center Director Dr. Maureen Hanson will be presenting current scientific research on ME/CFS during a panel session hosted by New York State Department of Health (NYS DOH). The session titled “Scientific Research on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in the Age of COVID-19” will be moderated by Dr. Charles Gonzalez. Dr. Ian Lipkin (Columbia University) and Dr. Avindra Nath (NIH) will be joining Hanson as panel presenters.

UPDATE: In case you missed the panel discussion, NYS DOH released a recording along with each presenter’s slides. Direct links to the recording and Dr. Hanson’s slides are below. Visit the NYS DOH ME/CFS website for more information.