Association’s Scientific Director Authors Eight Papers in 2008

In a given year, an investigator in the field of CFS research may have more than one of their papers published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Occasionally, after long writing, submission and review processes at various journals, papers from several CFS studies will come out in the space of a few months. But it’s somewhat rare to see one investigator involved in more than a few published studies in the course of one year. This underscores the achievement represented by the eight papers CFIDS Association Scientific Director Suzanne Vernon, PhD, had published in 2008.

Vernon began her role at the CFIDS Association in November of 2007 and is a well-respected scientific investigator with a long history of CFS research experience, most notably at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) where she initiated the multidisciplinary CFS Computational Challenge (C3) that yielded publication of 14 papers in the journal Pharmacogenomics in April 2006. So it’s not surprising that her efforts during that time and since joining the CFIDS Association’s team would be prolific.

Also of no surprise, given Vernon’s commitment to fostering communication between CFS investigators, most of the papers published are a result of collaboration between investigators from a variety of disciplines and geographic locations.

In February of 2008 Vernon coauthored a paper in Psychoneuroendocrinology, detailing genetic evaluation of the serotonergic system in CFS. In September of 2008 papers from two other studies, one on inflammatory immune signaling and one on neuroendocrine and immune network remodeling, appeared in the journals Behavioral Brain Function and Genomics, respectively.

Then in November 2008 BMC Systems Biology published a study by Vernon and fellow researchers detailing genetic analysis implicating a specific gene (FOXN1) in CFS—a paper from the CAMDA scientific conference of 2006. Also in November, Molecular Medicine published a paper by Vernon and colleagues about gene transcription in an exercise model of CFS. This was followed by a paper in the December 2008 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases on cytokine gene variations and how they affect the immune response to specific infections (see the story in this issue of the CFIDSLink).

January and February of 2009 will see the release of two more papers Vernon coauthored with other investigators involved in CFS research. The first, in the January 2009 issue of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, explores chronic fatigue and CFS as clinical entries across countries and health care settings. The work for this study was started five years ago and has taken nearly two-and-a-half years to publish. The second paper is embargoed until January 23, 2009; we’ll report on it next month.

According to Vernon, who believes that integration of multidisciplinary perspectives are key to progress in CFS research, the influx of information from so many collaborative research efforts is promising . . . and likely to continue as she works for the CFIDS Assocation. In commenting on where she hopes to go from here as an investigator, she says, “I think this year will be as exciting in terms of remarkable collaborative effort among researchers and between related CFS studies that could include some important publications to hit the CFS scene.”

Vollmer-Conna U, Piraino BF, Cameron B, Davenport T, Hickie I, Wakefield D, Lloyd AR; Dubbo Infection Outcomes Study Group (Dunckley H, Geczy A, Harris R, Khanna R, Marmion B, Rawlinson B, Reeves WC, Vernon S).  Cytokine polymorphisms have a synergistic effect on severity of the acute sickness response to infection.  Clin Infect Dis. 2008 Dec 1;47(11):1418-25.

Bolshin C, Aspler AL, Vernon SD, Broderick G.  Evidence of inflammatory immune signaling in chronic fatigue syndrome.  Behav Brain Funct. 2008 Sep 26;4:44.

Fuite J, Vernon SD, Broderick G.  Neuroendocrine and immune network re-modeling in chronic fatigue syndrome: An exploratory analysis.  Genomics. 2008 Sep 30. [Epub ahead of print].

Presson A, Sobel E, Papp J, Whistler T, Rajeevan MS, Reeves WC, Vernon SD, Horvath S.  A systems genetic analysis implicates FOXN1 in chronic fatigue syndrome.  BMC Syst Biol. 2008 Nov 6;2(1):95. [Epub ahead of print]

Sorensen B, Jones JF, Vernon SD, Rajeevan M.  Transcriptional control of complement activation in an exercise model of chronic fatigue syndrome.  Mol Med. 2008 Nov 16. [Epub ahead of print]

Hickie I, Davenport T, Vernon SD, Nisenbaum R, Reeves WC, Hadzi-Pavlovic D, Lloyd A; International Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study Group.  Are chronic fatigue and chronic fatigue syndrome valid clinical entities across countries and health-care settings? Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2009 Jan;43(1):25-35.

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