Research Update from Dr Julia Newton

The funding from the CFS/ME clinical network is now being put to use investigating how muscles function in those with CFS/ME. This is being done using the ‘State of the Art’ MR scanner which is based on the Newcastle General Site. Together with a team of physicists we are asking patients with CFS/ME to perform a series of leg exercises using a ‘rig’ that is placed inside the MR scanner.

To date we have scanned 8 CFS/ME patients, and the results are very interesting. The plan now is to perform the experiments in further patients and to look more fully at the phenomena that is frequently described by patients of ‘good days and bad days’ and that ‘if I exercise today I’ll pay for it tomorrow’. We are continuing to investigate the regulation of heart rate and blood pressure in CFS/ME and comparing the results from these studies to the muscle MR work.

If people with CFS/ME are willing to get involved with our programme of research please contact [email protected]. In order to determine whether the results we find in CFS/ME are different from those that we would expect in people with the same age and sex, it is important that we also perform measurements in normal people without CFS/ME. If there are any relatives of any age who would be willing to participate please contact Jessie either by email or phone (0191 2825237) and she will give information about the studies that we are doing.

One of the things that people frequently ask is whether the results of their tests are normal. Sometimes it is difficult to explain to people that there is no ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ as the tests we are doing are research. So at the moment we don’t know what is normal. Hopefully the research will ultimately help us to answer this. Many thanks as always for everyone's contribution to our work so far. Dr Julia Newton

We encourage members and friends to consider participating in this important work - please help if you can