Mary Ann Fletcher

Mary Ann Fletcher, Ph.D., is the first Schemel Professor for Neuro Immune Medicine at the Institute for Neuro Immune Medicine, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA. Previously, she spent 40 years at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine as a Professor of Medicine, Microbiology/Immunology and Psychology. She holds two U.S. Patents for developing tests to determine if a person has mononucleosis.

Dr. Fletcher is a voting member of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for the term: 06/13/12 to 12/13/16.

Open Letter to The Lancet
Two open letters to the editor of The Lancet urged the editor to commission a fully independent review of the PACE trial, which the journal had published in 2011. In 2016, Dr. Fletcher, along with 41 colleagues in the ME/CFS field, signed the second letter.
 * 10 February 2016, An open letter to The Lancet, again - Virology blog

Education

 * Bachelor of Science in Microbiology from Texas Tech University
 * Master of Science in Immunology and Virology from University of Texas Medical School
 * Doctor of Philosophy in Immunochemistry from Baylor University
 * Postdoctoral research at Northwestern University in Chicago.

Notable studies

 * 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, Illness progression in chronic fatigue syndrome: a shifting immune baseline
 * 2012, Biomarkers for chronic fatigue.
 * 2010, A Formal Analysis of Cytokine Networks in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Full Text
 * 2010, Plasma neuropeptide Y: a biomarker for symptom severity in chronic fatigue syndrome
 * 2001, Cytokine and Other Immunologic Markers in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Their Relation to Neuropsychological Factors