Gunnar Gottschalk

C. Gunner Gottschalk, M.S., is a student at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, Illinois and a member of the Board of Directors at Simmaron Research, a non-profit organization based in Incline Village, Nevada, which works to advance translational science in treating neuroimmune diseases like CFS/ME.

In 2012, Gottschalk was the Clinical Coordinator for years I and II of the CDC Multi-site Clinical Assessment of CFS. The project's aim was to characterize patients with CFS or myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) in clinical practices of clinicians with expertise in CFS/ME. Team members included Andreas Kogelnik, Lucinda Bateman, and Nancy Klimas.

In 2012, Gottschalk was the Cohort Recruitment Project Clinical Coordinator at the Chronic Fatigue Initiative at the Hutchins Family Foundation for the project to develop a clinical and biosample database to enable discovery of pathogens and pathogenic mechanisms in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

Notable Studies

 * 2017, Multi-Site Clinical Assessment of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MCAM): Design and Implementation of a Prospective/Retrospective Rolling Cohort Study "Abstract - In the Multi-Site Clinical Assessment of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (MCAM), we relied on expert clinician diagnoses to enroll patients from 7 specialty clinics in the United States in order to perform a systematic collection of data on measures of myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME)/chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Healthy persons and those with other illnesses that share some features with ME/CFS were enrolled in comparison groups. The major objectives were to: 1) use standardized questionnaires to measure illness domains of ME/CFS and to evaluate patient heterogeneity overall and between clinics; 2) describe the course of illness, identify the measures that best correlate with meaningful clinical differences, and assess the performances of questionnaires as patient/person-reported outcome measures; 3) describe prescribed medications, orders for laboratory and other tests, and management tools used by expert clinicians to care for persons with ME/CFS; 4) collect biospecimens for future hypothesis testing and for evaluation of morning cortisol profiles; and 5) identify measures that best distinguish persons with ME/CFS from those in the comparison groups and detect subgroups of persons with ME/CFS who may have different underlying causes. Enrollment began in 2012 and is planned to continue in multiple stages through 2017. We present the MCAM methods in detail, along with an initial description of the 471 patients with ME/CFS who were enrolled in stage 1."
 * 2016, Cytokine network analysis of cerebrospinal fluid in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome."Abstract: 'Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome is an unexplained debilitating disorder that is frequently associated with cognitive and motor dysfunction. We analyzed cerebrospinal fluid from 32 cases, 40 subjects with multiple sclerosis and 19 normal subjects frequency-matched for age and sex using a 51-plex cytokine assay. Group-specific differences were found for the majority of analytes with an increase in cases of CCL11 (eotaxin), a chemokine involved in eosinophil recruitment. Network analysis revealed an inverse relationship between interleukin 1 receptor antagonist and colony-stimulating factor 1, colony-stimulating factor 2 and interleukin 17F, without effects on interleukin 1α or interleukin 1β, suggesting a disturbance in interleukin 1 signaling. Our results indicate a markedly disturbed immune signature in the cerebrospinal fluid of cases that is consistent with immune activation in the central nervous system, and a shift toward an allergic or T helper type-2 pattern associated with autoimmunity.'"
 * 2015, Cytokines in the Cerebrospinal Fluids of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis
 * 2015, Findings from a clinical and laboratory database developed for discovery of pathogenic mechanisms in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Abstract
 * 2015, Chronic fatigue syndrome and co-morbid and consequent conditions: evidence from a multi-site clinical epidemiology study. Abstract
 * 2015, Distinct plasma immune signatures in ME/CFS are present early in the course of illness  FULL TEXT"'Abstract: Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is an unexplained incapacitating illness that may affect up to 4 million people in the United States alone. There are no validated laboratory tests for diagnosis or management despite global efforts to find biomarkers of disease. We considered the possibility that inability to identify such biomarkers reflected variations in diagnostic criteria and laboratory methods as well as the timing of sample collection during the course of the illness. Accordingly, we leveraged two large, multicenter cohort studies of ME/CFS to assess the relationship of immune signatures with diagnosis, illness duration, and other clinical variables. Controls were frequency-matched on key variables known to affect immune status, including season of sampling and geographic site, in addition to age and sex. We report here distinct alterations in plasma immune signatures early in the course of ME/CFS (n = 52) relative to healthy controls (n = 348) that are not present in subjects with longer duration of illness (n = 246). Analyses based on disease duration revealed that early ME/CFS cases had a prominent activation of both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines as well as dissociation of intercytokine regulatory networks. We found a stronger correlation of cytokine alterations with illness duration than with measures of illness severity, suggesting that the immunopathology of ME/CFS is not static. These findings have critical implications for discovery of interventional strategies and early diagnosis of ME/CFS.'"

Talks and Interviews

 * 2013, Gave oral presentation on the therapeutic potential of cidofovir at the HHV-6/7 International Conference 2013, Paris France
 * 2013, ME/CFS Alert Episode 49 - [[ME/CFS Alert] - Interview with Gunnar Gottschalk]
 * 2012, ME/CFS Alert Episode 30 - [[ME/CFS Alert] - Gunnar Gottschalk on ME/CFS Research and Challenges]

Online Presence

 * 2013, Taking Fundraising for ME/CFS Research to New Heights - Gunner Gottschalk and [[Robert Miller] skydive to raise funds for Simmaron Research]