CFS/ME can lead to a sudden fall in blood pressure when standing up (postural hypotension), through impairment of the postural vasomotor reflexes. A normal reflex should result in the constriction of the smaller (micro-) blood vessels of the feet to help prevent the rapid pooling of blood in the lower limbs and the associated significant fall in blood pressure.

Staff from the Regional Medical Physics Department based at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle have recently developed novel multi-site peripheral pulse technology that has great potential to objectively assess these reflexes. The technology is unique, and Dr John Allen recently attended the NHS Health and Social Care Awards ceremony in London to receive the team award for Innovative Technology. Part Funding for this study has been secured from the Northern CFS/ME Clinical Network for the essential patient tilt table equipment, and also from Dr Julia Newton for the study Research Associate ( Sam Stevens) to work on the project on a part-time basis until April 2008. Without this generous support we could not have moved the project forward to its current position.

The pulse research work is now well underway. The team presented a scientific poster of their intended work at the CFS/ME Northern Clinical Network meeting held at Dissington Hall, Ponteland, in December 2006. The tilt table equipment has been commissioned and Dr Julia Newton and Dr John Allen have been granted ethical approval to undertake the measurements. Refinement of the measurement protocol is underway in order to obtain the most repeatable measurements, thereby enabling significant differences between CFS/ME patients and healthy subjects to be detected with confidence. Many CFS/ME patients have kindly volunteered to take part in the study and the team hopes to commence patient measurements from May 2007 onwards. Early studies on subjects without CFS/ME have already shown some very interesting and publishable changes to the peripheral pulses with controlled standing using the tilt table. The team aim to publish their main research findings in early 2008.