What do ME/CFS, Long COVID, Multiple Sclerosis, Rheumatoid Arthritis, and PTSD have in common biologically?
A recent study in the Journal of Translational Medicine investigates precisely this question and arrives at an interesting result.
At the level of individual disease-associated genes, the researchers found only limited overlap between these very different diseases.
However, at a higher network level , common biological regulatory patterns were observed, including in:
Immune and cytokine signaling pathways
ME/CFS Interferon responses and T-cell regulation
mitochondrial functions and energy metabolism
metabolic regulation
mTOR signal paths
neuroendocrine stress regulation
This does not mean that ME/CFS, Long COVID, PTSD, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis are the same disease or have the same cause.
For me, the systems biology perspective is much more interesting:
Very different diseases can apparently have different molecular signatures and yet partially encounter the same overarching biological regulatory networks.
And here I see an interesting connection to the Cell Danger Response.
The Cell Danger Response (CDR) according to Prof. Robert Naviaux (scientific advisor on CDR at Safety Retreat) describes an evolutionarily conserved cellular reaction state to different forms of danger or stress.
This is not about a single defect. Rather, the focus is on a coordinated change in interconnected systems – including mitochondrial metabolism, immune response, cell communication, and stress adaptation.
That's precisely why I find the new study valuable:
She does not investigate the CDR and therefore cannot confirm it.
However, the observed common regulatory patterns of immune regulation, mitochondrial and metabolic processes, and stress regulation point in a similar systems biology direction.
Especially in the case of ME/CFS and Long COVID, this network perspective could be interesting for further research.
Link to the study: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12967-026-08874-9?utm
