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Dimensions of pure chronic fatigue: psychophysical, cognitive and biological correlates in the CFS

halcyon

Senior Member
Messages
2,482
Something else interesting regarding these high IL-8 levels. I was once given a very high single dose of amoxicillin and my illness was gone in 8 hours. And I mean gone....I had energy like normal, it was unbelievable.
Now I've just found a study that shows amoxicillin is effective at lowering IL-8:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9552221
That is interesting and could explain why some people report feeling better on abx, even without evidence of a bacterial infection. It's still symptomatic treatment only though. Suppressing inflammation doesn't get at what's causing the inflammation in the first place, which I would argue is an infection in tissue leading to release of IL-8.
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
My IL-8 went down on both Azythromycin and Doxy. I have consistently tested negative for Lyme. Dunno what to think.

Also my IL8 has always been tested by RedLabs/VIP/whatever they are called in the USA. I wonder if anyone has been tested elsewhere?
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
I suspect careers being built on psychosomatic explanations have something to do with that. In any case, what matters is the data and not the interpretation. From the abstract, the data looks interesting and could contribute to our understanding of CFS.
Yes, I found it interesting. They mention "psychosomatic" maybe 2-3 times but don't spend much time on trying to justify it or giving psychosomatic explanations (from what I recall).
 
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Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
Neu Figure4.png
As well as the immune test results (given earlier), I found the tests of fatiguability interesting and also the results:


Physical fatigability

Measures of muscular hand grip (HG) strength were realized with an electronic handgrip dynamometer (Hand Dynamometer, EH 1010, PE-3720; Newgen Medicals'm Inc.; PEARL" GmbH; Buggingen, Germany). Subjects had to sit in an upright position with the forearm in full supination and a 90° flexion, supported by a standard table in front of them (Fig. 1). Two types of measures were taken into account and the task was performed with the dominant hand. In the "tonic" condition, subjects must grip the handle as strongly as possible and maintain the grip as long as possible. This condition was performed four times and the measured variable was the time elapsed before grip force decreased by 50 %. In the "phasic" condition, subjects must grip the handle as strongly as possible and relax immediately during ten successive trials.
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Grip force (Table 4; Figs. 1, 2, 3)

Physical force performances were assessed with an electronic handgrip dynamometer (Fig. 1) by means of four tonic trials measuring the elapsed time from maximal grip strength (Fmax) to 50 % of Fmax (Table 4; Figs. 2, 3) and 10 phasic trials of F max, (Fig. 4). MANOVA was performed to compare mean physical strength performances during both phasic and tonic trials, fatiguability ratios (see below) and mean time to 50 % of F during tonic trials, between groups. Pillai's trace was significant for subject groups (F = 4.187, p = .007). Outcomes showed significant differences between groups for maximal mean grip strength during tonic and phasic conditions but not for mean time to 50 % of Fmax during tonic trials (Table 4). In addition, chronic fatigue patients showed higher fatiguability ratio during phasic trials (Phasic Fatiguability Ratio, PFR = (Phasic mean Fmax -Phasic Fmaxtrial 10)/Phasic mean Fmax) with a significantly different decline of Fmax, at the end or the phasic trials (Table 4; Fig. 4). Tonic trials did not show higher fatiguability in CFS patients (Tonic Fatiguability Ratio, TFR = (Tonic mean Fmax -Tonic Fmax trial 4)/Tonic mean Fmax) (Table 4). Repeated measures analyses (mixed ANOVA. Mauchly's test of sphericity. w = 0.720. p = NS) for time to 50% of Fmax during tonic trials did not show significant effects for trials x group. However, a main effect of Fmax during tonic trials was found for group (F = 5.805, p = 0.023). Mixed ANOVA for Fmax during phasic trials (signifinicant Mauchly's test of sphericity, w = 0.001, p < 0.001) showed (Greenhouse-Geisser corrections of F ratios were performed) significant effects for trials (F = 4.654, p = 0.007) and group (F = 9.748, p = 0.004) but not for trial x group.



Phasic grip strength was also significantly correlated to fatigue symptom intensity on trials 3-10 and mean phasic Fmax (p values ranging from 0.005 to 0.023) while showing a trend for trials 1 and 2.

ETA: The effect sizes are the numbers on the bottom. Notice how it is almost continuously increasing (the only odd one out is that 5>6 but not by much 0.279 vs 0.274
 
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Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
Here's the discussion of the muscle fatiguability results in the discussion. It's annoying they bring up motivation:

Measures of impaired physical force might also be related to motivation in CFS patients. Physical fatigue as measured here by hand grip strength was overall lower in patients during both phasic and tonic trials. In addition, patients showed a significantly different fatigability during phasic trials than HCs. While starting at a significantly lower Fmax at the 2nd, 3rd and 4th tonic hand grip trial, CFS patients showed similar elapsed time intervals to a 50% decline of Fmax at each tonic trial. Notwithstanding that CFS patients systematically presented with lower grip force. we calculated fatigability ratios (TFR and PFR to determine whether patients showed a significant per-formance decrease over the trials' periods with respect to mean force values in groups. Our results underline that a significant difference of force decrease presents during phasic trials (PFR, see Table 4) but not during tonic trials (TFR). The latter points to the fact that the sensitivity of these kinds of motor tests, is related to the effective trial repetition and duration of such trials.
 
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Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
It's annoying they bring up motivation in the discussion of the cognitive testing also. Again, it doesn't seem justified:

Assessments of cognitive, vigilance and psychomotor functions showed lower sustained attention capacities and impaired executive function (DSST, ZCTI), slower psycho-motor vigilance reaction times (PVT) but no differences on motor speed on the FTT. The sensitivity and specificity of cognitive testing in CFS have previously been challenged and discussed, showing that similar impairments may be found in EDS related PSD for instance (Neu et al. 2009). The observed differences between groups here however also corroborate findings connecting fatigue to impaired vigilance in relation with impaired motivation in fatigue-related conditions (Pattyn et al. 2008; Boksem et al. 2005: Langner et al. 2009).
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567
ETA: The effect sizes are the numbers on the bottom. Notice how it is almost continuously increasing (the only odd one out is that 5>6 but not by much 0.279 vs 0.274
Similar results are found with the grip strength with the four tonic trials.
The effect sizes (differences between the healthy controls and those with CFS) were:
0.120 < 0.155 < 0.180 < 0.226.

Both these results illustrate the increased fatiguability in CFS.

The only odd one out is the Tonic handgrip trials, time to 50% of Fmax where the scores are virtually identical and virtually at 0 for each of the four attempts.

These results suggest these tests have potential as an objective measure of fatiguability in ME/CFS.