Suzanne Vernon

Suzanne D. Vernon, PhD, is the Research Liaison at Bateman Horne Center of Excellence which specializes in treatment and research for ME/CFS and Fibromyalgia and the Chief Scientific Revolutionary of The BioCollective, a collaborative that provides storage and sales of microbiome samples for research and development.

From November 2007 – May 2015, Dr. Vernon was the Scientific Director of Solve ME/CFS Initiative, formerly known as CFIDS Association of America. While there she recognized that access to well-characterized clinical populations was a barrier to engaging more scientists in ME/CFS research. Thus, she started the Research Institute Without Walls (RIWW), "the first nonprofit patient-centered research initiative focused on identifying diagnostic biomarkers and disease-modifying treatment for ME/CFS." The core of RIWW is the SolveCFS BioBank & Patient Registry.

From May 1990 – October 2007, Dr. Vernon worked for the US Centers for Disease Control, first on the team investigating the human papillomavirus as an opportunistic infection in HIV-infected woman, and then in 1997, she became the CFS research group team leader, under William Reeves, MD, the Director of the CDC Chronic Fatigue Research Program. In 2005, the CDC published a case definition of CFS, commonly called the Reeves criteria, which has garnered much criticism for not being specific enough to exclude patients which other illnesses. In particular, there is no mention of post-exertional malaise. Dr. Vernon is listed as one of the ten authors.

Talks and interviews

 * 2016, Precision Medicine for ME/CFS & Fibromyalgia
 * 2015, Sleep and ME/CFS - Suzanne Vernon, PhD, A Bateman Horne Education Meeting
 * 2014, Episode 70, ME/CFS Alert - Llewellyn King Interviews Dr. Suzanne Vernon

Studies and Articles

 * 2016, Tracking post-infectious fatigue in clinic using routine Lab tests."ABSTRACT:'BACKGROUND: While biomarkers for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) are beginning to emerge they typically require a highly specialized clinical laboratory. We hypothesized that subsets of commonly measured laboratory markers used in combination could support the diagnosis of post-infectious CFS (PI-CFS) in adolescents following infectious mononucleosis (IM) and help determine who might develop persistence of symptoms. METHODS: Routine clinical laboratory markers were collected prospectively in 301 mono-spot positive adolescents, 4 % of whom developed CFS (n = 13). At 6, 12, and 24 months post-diagnosis with IM, 59 standard tests were performed including metabolic profiling, liver enzyme panel, hormone profiles, complete blood count (CBC), differential white blood count (WBC), salivary cortisol, and urinalysis....RESULTS: Lower ACTH levels at 6 months post-IM diagnosis were highly predictive of CFS (AUC p = 0.02). ACTH levels in CFS overlapped with healthy controls at 12 months, but again showed a trend towards a deficiency at 24 months. Conversely, estradiol levels depart significantly from normal at 12 months only to recover at 24 months (AUC p = 0.02). Finally, relative neutrophil count showed a significant departure from normal at 24 months in CFS (AUC p = 0.01). Expression of these markers evolved differently over time between groups. CONCLUSIONS: Preliminary results suggest that serial assessment of stress and sex hormones as well as the relative proportion of innate immune cells measured using standard clinical laboratory tests may support the diagnosis of PI-CFS in adolescents with IM.'"
 * 2016, Current therapeutic strategies for myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: results of an online survey
 * 2016, Uncovering Biomarkers– Fcg receptors in ME/CFS
 * 2016, Reductions in circulating levels of IL-16, IL-7 and VEGF-A in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome."ABSTRACT: 'Recently, differences in the levels of various chemokines and cytokines were reported in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) as compared with controls. Moreover, the analyte profile differed between chronic ME/CFS patients of long duration versus patients with disease of less than 3years. In the current study, we measured the plasma levels of 34 cytokines, chemokines and growth factors in 100 chronic ME/CFS patients of long duration and in 79 gender and age-matched controls. We observed highly significant reductions in the concentration of circulating interleukin (IL)-16, IL-7, and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor A (VEGF-A) in ME/CFS patients...In combination with previous data, our work suggests that the clustered reduction of IL-7, IL-16 and VEGF-A may have physiological relevance to ME/CFS disease. This profile is ME/CFS-specific since measurement of the same analytes present in chronic infectious and autoimmune liver diseases, where persistent fatigue is also a major symptom, failed to demonstrate the same changes..."
 * 2015, Chronic fatigue syndrome versus systemic exertion intolerance disease
 * 2015, Comparing and contrasting consensus versus empirical domains. Abstract
 * 2015, Changes in Gut and Plasma Microbiome following Exercise Challenge in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)."ABSTRACT:'...In patients with post-exertional malaise, significant worsening of symptoms occurs following physical exertion and exercise challenge serves as a useful method for identifying biomarkers for exertion intolerance. Evidence suggests that intestinal dysbiosis and systemic responses to gut microorganisms may play a role in the symptomology of ME/CFS. As such, we hypothesized that post-exertion worsening of ME/CFS symptoms could be due to increased bacterial translocation from the intestine into the systemic circulation. To test this hypothesis, we collected symptom reports and blood and stool samples from ten clinically characterized ME/CFS patients and ten matched healthy controls before and 15 minutes, 48 hours, and 72 hours after a maximal exercise challenge...Following maximal exercise challenge, there was an increase in relative abundance of 6 of the 9 major bacterial phyla/genera in ME/CFS patients from baseline to 72 hours post-exercise compared to only 2 of the 9 phyla/genera in controls (p = 0.005). There was also a significant difference in clearance of specific bacterial phyla from blood following exercise with high levels of bacterial sequences maintained at 72 hours post-exercise in ME/CFS patients versus clearance in the controls. These results provide evidence for a systemic effect of an altered gut microbiome in ME/CFS patients compared to controls. Upon exercise challenge, there were significant changes in the abundance of major bacterial phyla in the gut in ME/CFS patients not observed in healthy controls. In addition, compared to controls clearance of bacteria from the blood was delayed in ME/CFS patients following exercise. These findings suggest a role for an altered gut microbiome and increased bacterial translocation following exercise in ME/CFS patients that may account for the profound post-exertional malaise experienced by ME/CFS patients.'"
 * 2003, Identification of ambiguities in the 1994 chronic fatigue syndrome research case definition and recommendations for resolution

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