| Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha) |
MIZUKI Masao Osaka University Hospital Staff, 医学部・附属病院, 医員
TAGAWA Shinichi Osaka University Medical School, Assistant Professor, 医学部, 講師 (70171569)
KURATSUNE Hirohiko Osaka University Medical School, Instructor, 医学部, 助手 (50195533)
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| Research Abstract |
During the last decade, much interest has been focused on the etiology and pathophysiology of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Many hypotheses have been proposed to explain its etiology, but it does not yet become clear. Carnitine is well known to have important physiological roles in fatty acid metabolism, and so we have measured the serum carnitine concentrations in the patients with CFS,and have found that most cases of CFS have a singinficant decrement of serum acylcarnitine (ACR) concentration withour free carnitine (FCR) deficiency. Urinary excretion of ACR in the most patints with CFS did not increase. From the finding that there are apparent correlation between acylcarnitine concentraions and the degree of performance status in the patients with CFS,we assume that patients with CFS might have some abnormalities of metabolic system, especially fatty acid oxidation in the mitochondria, and that this abnormality might be related to the symptoms of CFS like as fatigue. The decrease
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of serum ACR level with normal FCR level has not yet been reported except for a few cases of congenital metabolic abnormalities, and so carnitine measurement has become a very important and useful laboratory method for the diagnosis and following up these patients.
Since no apparent clinical, laboratory and biochemical abnormality has been found in most patients wiht CFS who have severe physical complaints, the etiology of it has been thought to be psychiatric. However, our recent results indicated the possibility that etiology of it might be not psychiatric, but organic changes in the body. To determine why the serum concentration of ACR in the patients with CFS is decrease and to determine the roles and metabolism of endogenous ACR,we studied as follows :
1) The ralation between cytokines and ACR (interferon and tumor necrosis factor etc.)
2) The physiological significance of endogenous ACR,
i) Change of ACR concentration in serum, liver, skeletal, muscle, heart, and brain during starvation,
ii) Change of ACR concentration in serum, liver, skeletal, muscle, heart, and brain after refeeding on starvation
iii) Change of serum ACR concentration after administration of glucose
iv) Analysis of dynamic change of ACR metabolism after administration of glucose using positron emission tomography
3) The measurement of intracellular ACR concentration
4) The study of therapeutic use of ACR for the patients with CFS Less
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