Abstract:
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is a serious, debilitating disorder with a wide spectrum of symptoms, including pain, depression, and neurocognitive deterioration. Over 17 million people around the world have ME/CFS, predominantly women with peak onset at 30-50 years. Given the wide spectrum of symptoms and unclear etiology, specific biomarkers for diagnosis and stratification of ME/CFS are lacking. Here we show that actin network proteins in circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) offer specific non-invasive biomarkers for ME/CFS.
We found that circulating EVs were significantly increased in ME/CFS patients correlating to C-reactive protein, as well as biological antioxidant potential. Area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for circulating EVs was 0.80, allowing correct diagnosis in 90-94% of ME/CFS cases. From two independent proteomic analyses using circulating EVs from ME/CFS, healthy controls, idiopathic chronic fatigue, and depression, proteins identified from ME/CFS patients are involved in focal adhesion, actin skeletal regulation, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and Epstein-Barr virus infection. In particular, talin-1, filamin-A, and 14-3-3 family proteins were the most abundant proteins, representing highly specific ME/CFS biomarkers.
Our results identified circulating EV number and EV-specific proteins as novel biomarkers for diagnosing ME/CFS, providing important information on the pathogenic mechanisms of ME/CFS.
Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.
Source: Eguchi A, Fukuda S, Kuratsune H, Nojima J, Nakatomi Y, Watanabe Y, Feldstein AE. Identification of actin network proteins, talin-1 and filamin-A, in circulating extracellular vesicles as blood biomarkers for human myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome. Brain Behav Immun. 2019 Nov 20. pii: S0889-1591(19)30762-7. doi: 10.1016/j.bbi.2019.11.015. [Epub ahead of print] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31759091