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Abstract
The membrane immunobead assay results on the acetone lipid fraction of serum from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) patients (60 samples) and normal individuals (with no clinical CFS or other disease symptoms) showed significant differences with 4 exceptions (4 normals showed 1:40 and 1:80 titres). This represented approximately 10.8% of the normal samples, with 3 samples at 1:20, the majority of the CFS titred 1:40 through 1:160. This represented 95.0% of the samples. The small numbers of hepatitis patients and chronic ciguatera fish poisoning patients also had titres of 1:40 to 1:80 in all of the serum samples examined. The weights of the lipids in mg/ml serum essentially are very similar, except 1 or 2 of CFS and hepatitis B showed values at the upper level. Comparison of sexes showed 65% females and 35% men with CFS, representing a ratio of approximately 2:1 (female/male). It is concluded that certain disease conditions and environmental exposures to deleterious factors (toxin, chemicals, microorganisms) trigger the release of lipids (probably by the liver) with similar epitopes to ciguatoxin, and that they react with MAb–CTX. We designate these lipids as “chronic phase lipids” comparable to “acute phase protein” in inflammatory and traumatic diseases.