Cytokine signatures in chronic fatigue syndrome patients: a Case Control Study and the effect of anakinra treatment

Abstract

BackgroundCytokine disturbances have been suggested to be associated with the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) for decades.MethodsFifty female CFS patients were included in a study on the effect of the interleukin-1-receptor antagonist anakinra or placebo during 4 weeks. EDTA plasma was collected from patients before and directly after treatment. At baseline, plasma samples were collected at the same time from 48 healthy, age-matched female neighborhood controls. A panel of 92 inflammatory markers was determined in parallel in 1 μL samples using a ‘proximity extension assay’ (PEA) based immunoassay. Since Transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) and interleukin-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra) were not included in this platform, these cytokines were measured with ELISA.ResultsIn CFS/ME patients, the ‘normalized protein expression’ value of IL-12p40 and CSF-1 was significantly higher (p value 0.0042 and 0.049, respectively). Furthermore, using LASSO regression, a combination of 47 markers yielded a prediction model with a corrected AUC of 0.73. After correction for multiple testing, anakinra had no effect on circulating cytokines. TGF-β did not differ between patients and controls.ConclusionsIn conclusion, this study demonstrated increased IL-12p40 and CSF-1 concentrations in CFS/ME patients in addition to a set of predictive biomarkers. There was no effect of anakinra on circulating cytokines other than IL-1Ra. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT02108210, Registered April 2014Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12967-017-1371-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A possible role for mitochondrial-derived peptides humanin and MOTS-c in patients with Q fever fatigue syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome

“…This was also the case for IL-1β when comparing QFS patients with CFS patients and asymptomatic Q fever seropositive controls, and TNFα when comparing QFS patients with CFS patients and healthy controls. Interestingly, circulating IL-6 was also significantly increased in QFS patients compared to healthy controls, an observation that was made before in CFS patients [13, 34]. Looking at the transcriptomes of circulating monocytes in QFS and CFS patients, compared to healthy controls, no genes associated with the IL-6 production pathway seem to be overly expressed.…”

Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia Symptoms are Key Components of Deficit Schizophrenia and are Strongly Associated with Activated Immune-Inflammatory Pathways

“…Montoya et al (2017) examined 17 cytokines/chemokines, including CCL-11, and found a general elevation in pro-inflammatory cytokine/chemokine levels in CFS patients as compared to controls and, additionally, that these biomarkers were associated with the severity of CFS. Roerink et al (2017) found that MCP-1 and CCL-11 were among the chemokines that were associated with CFS.…”

Myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome: how could the illness develop?

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