Grant: Catalyst Grant: Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disorder characterized by severe fatigue and weakness of unknown origin, affecting anywhere from 2 to 25 of every 1000 individuals in the world today. The disorder affects severely impacts an individual's quality of life and productivity in the work force, and unfortunately has no specific treatments that target the root cause of the disorder, with current treatments aimed at improving its associated symptoms. Recent studies in humans have suggested that a reduced ability to burn carbohydrates/sugars for energy in skeletal muscle leads to muscle weakness and may be a key factor responsible for the severe fatigue in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Of interest, we have a developed in our laboratory a genetically modified mouse model that has a reduced ability to burn carbohydrates/sugars for energy, and we have observed that these animals have reduced voluntary activity, which may be the result of early fatigue. Therefore, we would like to carry out detailed studies in our genetically modified mouse model to determine whether an impaired ability to burn carbohydrates/sugars in skeletal muscle for energy is indeed a root cause for chronic fatigue syndrome. We will address this by measuring exercise capacity in our animals (both forced and voluntary exercise). If our results prove true it will suggest that increasing carbohydrate/sugar metabolism in skeletal muscle might be an exciting new strategy to treat chronic fatigue syndrome by actually attacking a mechanism causing this disorder, versus our current treatments that simply deal with improving patient symptoms.