Karl Morten

Karl Morten, PhD, is a senior researcher and laboratory manager at the Nuffield Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford University, United Kingdom. . His work focuses on understanding the role  of mitochondria in health and disease. Some of his work has been funded by the ME Association.

Mitochondrial function in Neutrophils and Monocytes
In March 2016 the ME Association announced it would fund Dr Morten and Professor Joanna Poulton to to assess mitochondrial function in Neutrophil and Monocyte cells from ME/CFS patients.

"'The pilot study will set up the tests required to assess mitochondrial function in blood samples from ME/CFS patients. This will make the blood tests more globally accessible to a wide range of researchers allowing a more universal validation of the findings of Booth/Myhill.'"

ME Association Christmas Appeal 2016
The ME Association Christmas Appeal for 2016 sought to raise £50,000 to fund research by a team led by Dr Morten to study metabolomics in patients. Dr Morten will work alongside scientists from Oxford and Newcastle Universities including Prof Julia Newton. Part of the team is ME/CFS patient Jamie Strong.

The research will focus on the chemical clues left behind by mitochondrial cells and follow on from the work of Dr Robert Naviaux in this area. 300 blood samples will analysed, many from the UK ME/CFS biobank.

Mitochondrial Energy Score test validation study
In 2019, Karl Morten and colleagues published their attempt to replicate the Mitochondrial Energy Score test provided by Dr Sarah Myhill, Norman Booth and John McLaren-Howard using samples from 10 patients who met the Canadian Consensus Criteria fire ME/CFS, and 13 healthy controls. They were unable to confirm the mitochondrial findings. Myhill responded to the publication, outlining significant factors that may have affected the results including the freezing of samples, and criticized the publication for incorrectly stating that the Mitochondrial Energy Score had been described as a diagnostic test for CFS/ME.

Notable studies

 * 2019, Assessing cellular energy dysfunction in CFS/ME using a commercially available laboratory test (Full text)
 * 2018, A new approach to find biomarkers in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) by single-cell Raman micro-spectroscopy (Abstract)
 * 2018, Potential clinical usefulness of gut microbiome testing in a variety of clinical conditions (Full text)

Talks and interviews

 * 2016, Talk on Research into Mitochondria & M.E. by Dr Karl Morten, (Slides from the Lecture)
 * Dec 2018, Developments in Understanding the Science Behind ME/CFS

Online presence

 * ResearchGate: Karl Morten
 * Oxford University: Karl Morten

Learn more

 * Patient Representative Reports from Dr Karl Morten's collaborative group, posted on the Science for ME forum
 * ME Association Christmas Appeal 2016