The statement from Haukeland University, Bergen from Professor Mella is a major disappointment for people with ME and their families.
What had looked to be a promising line of research that could lead to an effective treatment for a subgroup of patients defined by the Canadian Criteria and major understanding of the pathology of this disease has proven to be inconclusive.
Naturally, at the charity, everyone is disappointed. We are disappointed for all the ME patients and carers and families and friends.
We are especially disappointed for all of our supporters and all who have made such generous and tireless efforts to raise funds and awareness of our campaign.
We are very disappointed also for the Haukeland research team - a wonderful team who have brought hope to all patients - and, importantly, brought new insight into this disease and new interest from other areas. 
However, we have found, throughout 12 years of trying to change the way that ME is perceived, researched and treated that it is never easy.
It would be easy to give up, to resign oneself to nothing changing, to accept the status quo.
But we think differently.
At the 2017 Colloquium/Conference we invited Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm to present negative results. Because it is important to use negative results for positive effects. Negative results are data and the Norwegian rituximab trial has generated a lot of data that needs to be looked at very carefully. 
When we first engaged Professor Jonathan Edwards into research into ME one of the earliest comments he made was that he was pleased to note that our conference did contain negative results.
We see the positives in this research which has been performed by researchers of the utmost integrity who have not made headlines for the sake of it but have thoroughly conducted outstanding research, and still retained a humility that is to their credit and that of their colleagues and team.
We have an excellent research team in Norway which has served the ME patient community and their families with honesty, integrity, professionalism, determination and an empathy which had never been seen before in this field.
We have established good working relationships between the Norwegian researchers and the UK Centre with input from UCL and UEA/Quadram Institute.
We have data now – more than before.
We have research which IiMER has established and a foundation for the Centre of Excellence for ME.
We have international collaboration in research into ME that will continue.
And we have new plans – already in the making.
The researchers from Haukeland will give more detail on their results and publish a paper or two which will benefit all studying ME. 


For us, we have invited the Haukeland team to Norwich to discuss the way forward.
We remain positive. Another setback, another day.
We have already been in discussion with our advisors and with the Norwegian team and we will meet to clarify the best way forward in the near future with our major funder and researchers.
We still have much good research being funded and being planned and feel our stategy is, and will pay off and lead to the most rapid route to finding cause(s) of ME and effective treatments.
In another age, and in another struggle which has some parallels to that which is forced upon people with ME, these words strike a chord -
“ We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope. ” 
- Dr Martin Luther King

Source: http://www.investinme.org/IIMER-Newslet-1711-03.shtml

No Isolation for ME

November 15, 2017– 

With myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), one of the most insidious consequences of this devastating and disabling disease that affects patients can be the isolation experienced.
This is especially true for younger patients and the consequences of this can extend far into adulthood and beyond and lead to unnecessary departure from society.
Already, due to the consequences of a lack of a sensible and standardised pathway to care, patients are stigmatised and excluded from society. 
This need not be so and much could be done to avoid this by tackling this issue early on for young children affected by ME. 

Earlier this year Invest in ME Research was contacted by a Norwegian company who were interested in demonstrating a product that was aimed at reducing the isolation experienced by many younger people who were unable to attend school, or were cut-off from social contact due to illness.
Obviously, the charity immediately saw the parallels with ME and the possibility of raising awareness of one of the least publicised side effects of this disease on patients, and their families.
Our immediate reaction was how we can help use this to publicise awareness of the effects of ME on children. 
We then invited the company – No Isolation – to take a table at our 12th International ME Conference in London (IIMEC12) and offered to work further to support this campaign.
The charity felt this to be a worthwhile cause that could help alleviate some of the unnecessary suffering that careless or ignorant education systems inflict on sick children and their families.
The company’s product - AV1 robot - helps children and youths with ME to continue to be connected to their peers at school despite not being present for all or some of the time due to illness.
The robot is now available in the UK and together, with No Isolation, we are hoping to set up trials.
Invest in ME Research will be contacting local education authorities to trial AV1.
Initially, a trial of three AV1 robots will be set up involving families who currently have a child with ME who is unable to attend school, or whose regular attendance is compromised by ME.
Children and youths with long-term illness such as ME do not need to be excluded from their friends’ activities and progress and schools have a responsibility not to ignore them – something which can lead to long term discrimination.
The robot, called AV1, acts as the students’ eyes, ears and voice in the classroom on days where they cannot be physically present. With AV1 the student controls the robot with an app on a tablet. When the student raises their hand, a light flashes on AV1’s head. The robot can be turned 360 degrees, so the student can see the entire classroom and talk to other students. If the student does not feel like actively participating, they communicate it by turning on a blue light on AV1’s head. AV1 is designed to withstand Childs play, and can join classmates in the playground or on after school visits.


AV1 is already helping ME-patients across Scandinavia, the Netherlands and UK.
Children and youths suffering from ME is the largest user group – a salient point and one that ought to be a red flag for any education system.
Research fellow Jorun Børsting and senior lecturer Alma Leora Culén at the Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo, are researching the technology needs of ME-patients. Having studied the use of AV1 among nine children and youths suffering from ME they see a big advantage in the fact that the robot is designed with ME-patients in mind. Børsting stresses that the robot cannot fully replace normal attendance at school or home teaching, but act as a supplement.

We invite support for this campaign to help younger children – in the hope and knowledge that it could lead to fewer problems in the future for young people affected by ME.
“Of the children I followed several had not attended school in a long time when they first received the robot. 
Some had been out of school for over six months. 
After they received AV1, all of them participated regularly, on their own terms” 
- Jorun Børsting, Research fellow and senior lecturer Alma Leora Culén at the Institute for Informatics, University of Oslo.


Invest in ME Research will receive no financial reward for this campaign. 
The charity does this in order to highlight and overcome a major consequence of becoming ill with ME.
We invite support for this initiative by assisting us with contact to local schools and education authorities.
The advantage in participating in class through a tablet is that they have full control over sound levels, light and movement. In a normal classroom they do not have the option to control sensory inputs in this way. Furthermore, they can participate exactly when they feel like it, taking into account that symptoms can fluctuate over the course of the illness, even from hour to hour


Invest in ME Research is a major UK charity which campaigns for biomedical research into ME and for proper education of healthcare staff and support for ME patients. 
The charity has been instrumental in initiating a UK Centre of Excellence for ME and there are now five PhD student positions involved in researching ME.
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If you would like more information about this topic, please contact Invest in ME Research at 02380 643736 or email at info@investinme.org.
If you would like to be one of the families trialling AV1 and would be prepared to report back during the trial and work with us, No Isolation and the school/school authority then we would be very keen to hear from you.