Stephen Holgate

Professor Stephen Holgate was the Chair of the UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative 2013-2020 and chair of the MRC-led ME expert group 2008-2011. He is Medical Research Council Clinical Professor of Immunopharmacology and Honorary Consultant Physician within Medicine at the University of Southampton, Southampton, England.

He was knighted for services to medical research in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours List.

Bio in Nature Reviews: "He received his medical degree from the University of London, UK, M.D. by thesis and D.Sc. from the University of Southampton. From 1978 to 1980 he spent a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, researching inflammatory mechanisms. His current research is directed towards the pathophysiology of asthma and allied disorders, with a special interest in understanding how environmental exposures such as allergens, virus infections and air pollutants interact with the airways in the induction and exacerbation of asthma."

Having chaired the UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative since its inception in 2013, he has stated that he wants to develop a "dream team" of the best researchers working on the UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative. One the projects launched by the Collaborative was the Grand Challenge, called such because its goal was to study ten thousand patients.

He believes that ME/CFS could have twelve to fifteen different ‘causal pathways’ and that may be the reason it has been so hard to decipher.

Articles

 * 2011, Chronic fatigue syndrome: understanding a complex illness.
 * 2013, A Dozen Different Diseases? Stephen Holgate Calls for Radical Change in ME/CFS Research
 * 2013, Forward ME Minutes of the Meeting 2 Jul 2013 - Professor Stephen Holgate invited to speak.
 * 2013, Patients with chronic fatigue use additional areas of brain when using memory
 * 2013, Launch of inclusive UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative
 * 2015, Fighting Over Fatigue: Will This Chronic Syndrome Ever Be Taken Seriously?

Notable studies

 * 2003,  Identification of novel expressed sequences, up‐regulated in the leucocytes of chronic fatigue syndrome patients - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14519154/
 * 2005, Gene expression in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with chronic fatigue syndrome - (Full Text)
 * 2008, Gene Expression Subtypes in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (Full Text)
 * 2011, Chronic fatigue syndrome: understanding a complex illness - (Abstract)

Talks and interviews

 * 2013, Prof Stephen Holgate, Chair of the UK CFS/M.E. Research Collaborative, gives the keynote speech at our 2013 AGM and research conference in London.
 * 2014, Edinburgh M.E. Self-help Group (edmesh) Open Meeting May 2014 - Stephen Holgate Speaking
 * 2015, UK CFS/M.E. Research Collaborative Science Conference Day 1
 * 2016, UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative Conference, Welcome address
 * 2018, UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative Conference, Welcome address

Controversy
Stephen Holgate supported and endorsed the controversial online CBT therapy for children research, the FITNET trial, led by Esther Crawley in 2016 which got a lot of media promotion. Dr Esther Crawley claimed that many children could be cured by this & professor Holgate called it the type of high quality research we needed more of

Professor Holgate was a cosignatory of the infamous 2012 letter in the Independent in support of Simon Wessely’s CFS work & his receipt of the Maddox prize for bravery in the “controversial” Chronic Fatigue Syndrome field.

Learn more

 * Sethphen Holgate's Faculty page at University of Southampton
 * UK CFS/ME Research Collaborative
 * Grand Challenge