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Exercise responsive genes measured in peripheral blood of women with chronic fatigue syndrome and matched control subjects.

Whistler T, Jones JF, Unger ER, Vernon SD.
Exercise responsive genes measured in peripheral blood of women with chronic fatigue syndrome and matched control subjects.
BMC Physiology 2005;5:5 The complete electronic version of this article is available at http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6793/5/5

Summary

Patients with CFS have exacerbated symptoms after physical activity and exercise also induces changes in physiologic function mimicking an infectious or inflammatory state. This study where patients and healthy subjects were challenged with an exercise stress serves is another 'model' system to help us understand the pathophysiology of CFS. Blood samples were drawn before and after exeercise (6 and 24 hours). Microarrays were used to simultaneously assess the expression of 3,800 genes. The patterns of gene expression differed between subjects with CFS and normal controls. The differentially expressed genes have functions related to energy metabolism, muscle response, and immune response. We are continuing laboratory analysis to measure other factors that might help us to better understand these patterns.

Abstract

Background: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is defined by debilitating fatigue that is exacerbated by physical or mental exertion. To search for markers of CFS-associated post-exertional fatigue, we measured peripheral blood gene expression profiles of women with CFS and matched controls before and after exercise challenge.

Results: Women with CFS and healthy, age-matched, sedentary controls were exercised on a stationary bicycle at 70% of their predicted maximum workload. Blood was obtained before and after the challenge, total RNA was extracted from mononuclear cells, and signal intensity of the labeled cDNA hybridized to a 3800-gene oligonucleotide microarray was measured. We identified differences in gene expression among and between subject groups before and after exercise challenge and evaluated differences in terms of Gene Ontology categories. Exercise-responsive genes differed between CFS patients and controls. These were in genes classified in chromatin and nucleosome assembly, cytoplasmic vesicles, membrane transport, and G protein-coupled receptor ontologies. Differences in ion transport and ion channel activity were evident at baseline and were exaggerated after exercise, as evidenced by greater numbers of differentially expressed genes in these molecular functions.

Conclusions: These results highlight the potential use of an exercise challenge combined with microarray gene expression analysis in identifying gene ontologies associated with CFS.

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