The Norwegian Minister of Health has allocated two million Norwegian kroner – that's just short of £219,000 – to further research into the use of the cancer drug rituximab in the treatment of CFS.
According to a Google translation of an item that appeared on the website of Norwegian TV station, TV2, the money will pay for a larger clinical trial to be carried out by Professor Olav Mella and Dr Øystein Fluge – the researchers who discovered by accident that the drug might work with some patients who had both lymphoma and CFS. The results of their small scale trial were published in PlosOne in October.
Mella and Fluge work at Haukeland University Hospital, Bergen.
The Health Minister, Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen, also announced that a new Norwegian National Centre for M.E. would be set up at Oslo University.
To read the ‘Google English' translation of the TV2 news report, please click HERE.