A letter from Associate Professor of Physiology at the University of Adelaide, Dr Garry Scroop, advises that he is planning a study of CFS/ME patients during 1997 in co-operation with Adelaide researcher Dr Richard Burnet.

"A preliminary study in 1996 demonstrated that some patients with CFS/ME have a low body potassium," Dr Scroop says. "Given the importance of potassium in muscle function and exercise, we studied CFS/ME patients during 5 minutes of moderate intensity whole body exercise on a cycle ergometer. The patients with CFS/ME released less potassium, even though they were as aerobically fit as the control subjects without CFS/ME."

"We now plan to study a small muscle group in the forearm during forearm exercise. Such a study is much more scientific and we can learn much more about potassium in CFS/ME patients ÖThe study will be quite complex and will require that we take arterial and venous blood samples from the forearm blood vessels. This is achieved by inserting tubes under local anaesthetic to remove any discomfort".

Dr Scroop says this study will allow the research team to understand in detail the physiology of muscles in CFS/ME patients and may well expose an important failure in muscle function in this disease.


Acknowledgment: Reprinted from Talking Point, September 1996, Journal of The CFS/ME Society (SA) Inc., GPO Box 383, Adelaide, South Australia.


Reprinted from Emerge, Dec 1996.