Just Four Quid

ME Research UK (charity number SC036942) has the principal aim of commissioning and funding scientific (biomedical) investigation into the causes, consequences and treatment of ME/CFS. The charity also aims to ‘energise ME research’ globally by identifying potentially important areas for future biomedical research, producing high-quality professional reviews and reports, presenting research at meetings and conferences, and hosting international conferences.

All ME Research UK’s grants are competitive and subject to peer review, and its priority is to support innovative clinical and biomedical studies, based in established research institutions. To date, the charity and its funding partners, which have included the Irish ME Trust, the John Richardson Research Group and the Tymes Trust, has invested over half a million pounds to support biomedical research projects, and fuller details of these including the resulting scientific papers can be found at the research section of MERUK’s website.

Current ongoing projects include:

• Autonomic nervous system dysfunction – a clinical study (University of Newcastle, UK)
• The effect of exercise on the immune and sensory systems (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
• Non-invasive neuroimaging of the brain (Imperial College London)
• Plasma vitamin D status (University of Dundee)
• Gene expression studies (University of London)

ME Research UK is keen to expand its range of biomedical research projects to include centres of research excellence around the globe. Energising research into ME/CFS is a huge task, but one that the charity is determined to pursue, and why it is so delighted to support the Just Four Quid campaign.

Dr Neil Abbot, ME Research UK