Dr Katrina Pears, Research Coordinator, joined Tees, Esk, and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust to present at one of their Lunch and Learn Sessions in March 2025.
The session was well attended, with 50 employees joining from all different areas of employment within the trust. The session was also recorded and placed on their staff intranet, allowing further engagement at a later date.
Katrina gave a session on Research into ME/CFS and Long Covid, giving a brief overview on what we know to date on what might cause the disease, predisposing, precipitating, and perpetuating factors, and explained what the research has been telling us of the underlying disease process.
Katrina briefly covered the research evidence in the following areas:
- Brain/neurology
- Blood and plasma
- Genetics
- Gut microbiome
- Heart/cardiac
- Immune system
- Metabolism
- Mitochondria, cellular bioenergetics, and exercise physiology.
Finally, the session was opened up to Q&A, which allowed engagement from employees of the trust and a discussion of a range of topics, including:
- children with ME/CFS,
- diagnosis with elimination of other causes,
- the role of specialists services and who should diagnosis fall under, and
- the need for mental health services to be involved in a multidisciplinary team (to help manage the limitations and new restrictions of having a chronic illness).
We hope to shortly have a range of presentations available on our website which cover: (1) ME/CFS What do you need to know, (2) ME/CFS and Long Covid are they the same condition and (3) Long covid what you need to know. We will also be launching our new booklet on “what do you need to know about ME/CFS” in April/May and this will also cover a summary of the research.