Evidence of inflammatory immune signaling in chronic fatigue syndrome A pilot study of gene expression in peripheral blood.docVIP

Behavioral and Brain Functions BioMedCentral Research Open Access Evidence of inflammatory immune signaling in chronic fatigue syndrome: A pilot study of gene expression in peripheral blood Anne L Aspler1, Carly Bolshin1, Suzanne D Vernon2 and Gordon Broderick*1 Address: 1Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 2H7, Canada and 2The CFIDS Association of America, Charlotte, North Carolina, 28222, USA Email: Anne L Aspler - aaspler@ualberta.ca; Carly Bolshin - bolshin@ualberta.ca; Suzanne D Vernon - sdvernon@; Gordon Broderick* - gordon.broderick@ualberta.ca * Corresponding author Published: 26 September 2008 Received: 22 April 2008 Accepted: 26 September 2008 Behavioral and Brain Functions 2008, 4:44 doi:10.1186/1744-9081-4-44 This article is available from: /content/4/1/44 ? 2008 Aspler et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Genomic profiling of peripheral blood reveals altered immunity in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) however interpretation remains challenging without immune demographic context. The object of this work is to identify modulation of specific immune functional components and restructuring of co-expression networks characteristic of CFS using the quantitative genomics of peripheral blood. Methods: Gene sets were constructed a priori for CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, CD19+ B cells, CD14+ monocytes and CD16+ neutrophils from published data. A group of 111 women were classified using empiric case definition (U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and unsupervised latent cluster analysis (LCA). Microarray profiles of peripheral blood w