IL-10 Cytokine Testing Needed for Veterans of the Gulf War

The research article below from the Clinical Vaccine Immunological Journal discusses chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and sleep disturbances on the measurement of IL-10 Cytokine Testing .  As far as known no gulf war veterans were participants in this study from the Pain and Fatigue Study Center and Departments of Neurosciences and Medicine at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark.

This research articles helps to highlight the need for coordination that could occur at the New Jersey WRIIS center.  It also would be helpful if studies done through NIH funding on Chronic Fatigue and Fibromyalgia would include ill gulf war veterans in their recruitment for subjects.

Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2010 Feb 24. [Epub ahead of print]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20181767

Cytokines across the night in chronic fatigue syndrome with and without Fibromyalgia.
Nakamura T, Schwander SK, Donnelly R, Ortega F, Togo F, Broderick G, Yamamoto Y, Cherniack NS, Rapoport D, Natelson BH.

Pain & Fatigue Study Center, and Departments of Neurosciences and Medicine, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Newark NJ 07103; Department of Work Stress Control, Japan National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Kawasaki, 214-8585, Japan; Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, Educational Physiology Laboratory, Graduate School of Education, The University of Tokyo; and Department of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, New York NY 10016.

The symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome are consistent with cytokine dysregulation. This has led to the hypothesis of immune dysregulation as the cause of this illness. To further test this hypothesis, we did repeated blood sampling for cytokines while patients and matched healthy controls slept in the sleep lab. Because no one method for assaying cytokines is acknowledged to be better than another, we assayed for protein in serum, message in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) and function in resting and stimulated PBLs.

We found no evidence of pro-inflammatory cytokine upregulation. Instead, in line with some of our earlier studies, we did find some evidence to support a role for an increase in IL-10, an anti-inflammatory cytokine. Although the changes were small, they may contribute to the common complaint of CFS patients of disrupted sleep.

PMID: 20181767 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]