Not to take this thread too far off track - have the MC/CFC crowd come up with any treatment approaches that assume this is the underlying pathology?
Do they work?
In principle antivirals would be a treatment, to clear the viral infection from the vagus nerve; but Dr Michael VanElzakker has pointed out that antiviral drugs have poor penetration into nerve tissue. Furthermore, with ME/CFS linked to a range of viruses (herpes family viruses, enteroviruses, etc), there may not be an antiviral available for the particular virus an ME/CFS patient has.
Whether this vagus nerve theory of ME/CFS is true or not, it's actually a very instructive concept, because it provides a hypothesis to explain how multiple different viruses can cause the same disease and the same symptoms.
Any theory that purports to explain ME/CFS will need to account for how different chronic viral infections can all cause the same symptoms of ME/CFS.
There have been dozens of theories on the cause of ME/CFS, each very interesting in its own right.
One fascinating theory was the hydrogen sulphide (H2S) hypothesis of ME/CFS. Low levels of H2S will put mice into a hibernation state of super low energy consumption (which looks similar to ME/CFS). The theory was that H2S might do the same thing in humans, and so higher levels of H2S in the blood might then explain ME/CFS.
The gas H2S is naturally produced by bacteria in the gut, and tests showed that ME/CFS patients have higher levels of H2S in their gut, due to having more of the species of gut bacteria that create H2S.
So people got excited about this theory, and ME/CFS patients started trying supplements which mop up H2S in the gut, including myself. Unfortunately though, nobody seemed to improve on these supplements, and these days, people have lost interest in the H2S theory of ME/CFS.
I've never done a deep dive into MC/CFS, but every time I do ponder it, mitochondrial issues and membrane therapeutics like PPC come to mind.
https://www.scienced...005273613004070
Lipid Replacement Therapy: A natural medicine approach to replacing damaged lipids in cellular membranes and organelles and restoring function
https://nutrasal.com...pc-product-page
A few years ago, there was some interest among ME/CFS patients in trying lipid replacement therapy. I tried this myself, taking the lipid replacement supplement NT Factor. Some patients reported transient improvements using NT Factor, including myself, but unfortunately there were no long term benefits.
There is a lot of interest in mitochondrial dysfunction theories of ME/CFS though, as defects have been found in the glycolysis / mitochondrial energy production metabolism of ME/CFS patients.
What's really interesting is that if you add a drop of ME/CFS patients blood serum to healthy cells from another person in a petri dish, those cells will start to develop mitochondrial and energy metabolism dysfunctions!
So there is a mysterious unknown factor present in ME/CFS patients' blood which causes mitochondrial dysfunction, even if added to healthy cells from another person!
I started a thread about this mysterious "something in the serum" of ME/CFS patients here.
Edited by Hip, 09 November 2023 - 04:45 PM.