Neonatal and Pediatric Medicine
Open Access

Abstract

ME/CFS is a multisystemic disease affecting more than 2 million people in the United States. No known cause of this chronic illness is known. In routine laboratory tests only Borrelia burgdorferi serology is routinely measured. However humans can be infected with several Borrelia species. Detection of these species of Borrelia was still a problem. Recently the detection of phages of this infection using a novel qPCR and sequencing became available. Borrelia species are always infected by their own type of Borrelia bacteriophages. We reported in 2022 that 72 % of 130 ME/CFS (ICC, 2011) tested positive for Phage Borrelia qPCR (Borrelia miyamotoi) versus 10 % of healthy controls. Borrelia miyamotoi was first isolated in Japan in 1995 and now found everywhere in the world, despite the fact that it is still poorly studied. Of our initial study group we studied 33 women positive for Phage Borrelia qPCR and 56 of their children. Only 6 of these 56 children tested negative for Phage Borrelia qPCR. They all were asymptomatic. The remaining 50 tested positive (46/50 for Borrelia miyamotoi). Of these only 5 (10 %) were asymptomatic and 9 (18 %) had mild symptoms. The other 36 (72 %) met criteria compatible with ME/CFS (ICC 2011); in this group there were a lot of co-morbidities, as OCD, ADD, ADHD and even regressive form of autism. These data provide evidence that Borrelia miyamotoi is transmitted from mother to child and that the infected offspring is confronted with high % of morbidity. Keywords: ME/CFS; Borrelia; Bacteriophages

Biography

Kenny De Meirleir is emeritus professor in physiology, pathophysiology and medicine. He is a certified specialist in internal medicine, cardiology and rehabilitation medicine. He has practiced medicine for 40 years and has developed since 1989 specific interests in chronic fatigue syndrome and later in chronic diseases which had developed after infections. He holds a PhD in physiology (1985) and became a full time professor at the Free University of Brussels in 1985. He has examined, diagnosed and treated almost 20.000 ME/CFS patients in all 5 continents of the world. Currently his scientific and medical practices are situated in Belgium at Himmunitas and Whittemore-Peterson Institute at the University of Nevada (USA).