Chronic Fatigue Syndrome treated as an immunological disorder

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a condition that demands a multi-disciplinary expertise of the clinician. The fascinating video below is of a presentation by Inge Lindseth of Oslo at this year's Autoimmunity Congress held recently in Granada, Spain. Key points include:

• Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is an immunological disorder.
• There is evidence that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome occurs with or after an infectious trigger.
• Autoantibodies directed against self-tissue and antibodies against pathogenic bacteria and common enterobacteria have been identified in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
• Autoimmune attack on self-tissue persists when a pathogenic bacteria can no longer be found.
• The vitamin D receptor (VDR) plays a crucial role in innate immunity in general and its function may be impaired with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
• The Marshall Protocol for is based on the recognition that microbes can disable the VDR. It re-purposes olmesartan (an angiotensin II AT1 receptor antagonist primarily used to treat hypertension) to out-compete microbial ligands for the vitamin D receptor binding pocket, thus re-activating the VDR. Some impressive outcomes have been documented treating Chronic Fatigue Syndrome with this approach.

Dysfunction of the VDR can be evaluated in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and other disorders by measuring serum levels of 1, 25 dihydroxy vitamin D (not the 25 hydroxy vitamin D usually used to check active vitamin D levels).A transcript of this video presentation is available here.