Sufferer welcomes ME research funds (From Worcester News)
Get involved! Send your photos, video, news & views by texting WN NEWS to 80360 or e-mail us
Sufferer welcomes ME research funds
3:30pm Friday 30th December 2011 in News
SUPPORT: Ian Logan has welcomed a decision by the Medical Research Council to fund £1.6 million of research projects.
A GRANDFATHER from Worcestershire who has battled a debilitating condition for more than 20 years has welcomed a new research project which he hopes may lead to a cure.
Ian Logan, aged 64, of Martley, near Worcester, is chairman of the Worcestershire ME Support Group.
Now he has welcomed a decision by the Medical Research Council to fund £1.6 million of research projects into the chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) illness.
The five projects will investigate the mechanisms and the underlying biological processes involved in the illness, which could eventually lead to better diagnosis and the development of more effective treatments.
The areas of research are nervous system disorders, cognitive symptoms, fatigue, the immune system (viral infection), pain and sleep disorders.
Mr Logan’s ME prevented him from working as an engineer and has left his body racked by aches and pains in his muscles and bones, suffering flu-like symptoms and feeling exhausted and sluggish.
He said: “It’s about time too although, in my case, it’s 20 years too late. I welcome every bit of research that is looking at the physical causes of the illness. I wouldn’t waste any further money on the psychological side of research.”
Mr Logan said he hoped researchers would be able to discover the cause of ME and CFS which have been linked to a retrovirus and from that develop more effective treatments and possibly a cure.
Mr Logan said the best description of the condition was “like having a hangover, running a marathon and having flu at the same time”.
Mr Logan’s symptoms have improved in the last two years as he has turned to complementary medicine, including acupuncture, but he said that conventional medicine has so far failed him and others.
“This has never been caused by depression. Doctors don’t offer anything other than anti-depressants and they don’t help at all. If you go to any doctor, the chap doesn’t know what to do.”
CFS/ME is a complex and debilitating condition that affects around 250,000 people in the UK.
Symptoms include profound physical and mental fatigue, muscle and joint pain, disturbed sleep patterns and concentration and memory problems.
DrJohnMECommTrust says...
9:09pm Sat 31 Dec 11
Firstly, some of the projects, said to be, are not biomedical and are led by researchers who do not believe that M.E. is of physiological origin. Secondly, it is unlikely that any conclusions drawn from these studies could be applied to people with M.E. because, contrary to common assertion and repetition, M.E. is not the same as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and attempting to apply recommendations for treatment from a different set of people is mostly ineffective and can be potentially harmful for M.E. sufferers.
We shall make no progress until this wasteful expenditure on invalid and unreliable experimental design is no longer tolerated. Precious funding must first be allocated to separating M.E. as a discrete illness from the indiscriminate CFS bundle, as a proper foundation for any work that can be trusted.