Cellular bioenergetics is impaired in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome
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Date
2017Author
Tomas, Cara
Elson, Joanna
Brown, Audrey
Strassheim, Victoria
Newton, Julia
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Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a highly debilitating disease of unknown aetiology.
Abnormalities in bioenergetic function have been cited as one possible cause for CFS. Preliminary
studies were performed to investigate cellular bioenergetic abnormalities in CFS
patients. A series of assays were conducted using peripheral blood mononuclear cells
(PBMCs) from CFS patients and healthy controls. These experiments investigated cellular
patterns in oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) and glycolysis. Results showed consistently
lower measures of OXPHOS parameters in PBMCs taken from CFS patients compared
with healthy controls. Seven key parameters of OXPHOS were calculated: basal
respiration, ATP production, proton leak, maximal respiration, reserve capacity, non-mitochondrial
respiration, and coupling efficiency. While many of the parameters differed
between the CFS and control cohorts, maximal respiration was determined to be the key
parameter in mitochondrial function to differ between CFS and control PBMCs due to the
consistency of its impairment in CFS patients found throughout the study (p 0.003). The
lower maximal respiration in CFS PBMCs suggests that when the cells experience physiological
stress they are less able to elevate their respiration rate to compensate for the
increase in stress and are unable to fulfil cellular energy demands. The metabolic differences
discovered highlight the inability of CFS patient PBMCs to fulfil cellular energetic
demands both under basal conditions and when mitochondria are stressed during periods
of high metabolic demand
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http://hdl.handle.net/10394/26044https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186802
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0186802&type=printable