A few quick thoughts on the first day of the IACFS Conference

Here is "Searcher's" summary from PR of the first day of the IACFS Conference

It seems as if the speakers who also spoke at the previous day's Stanford Symposium gave more or less the same presentations.  So if you've already read the summary of those presentations, you can probably skip summaries of those same presenters.

The most interesting presentation here, in my opinion, is by "virus hunter" Ian Lipkin.  Among other things, he says:  "It’s not actually an infectious disease but immune response."  It seems that more and more, this is where the research conclusions are heading.  It may be that sometimes there is an infectious trigger (while for others it's chemical exposure, injury, mold), but once the immune system derangement is triggered, the disease is more about the problems that stem from a faulty immune system.

There seems to be a split approach among the speakers:  There are those that present their most recent findings, and those who sort of summarize a career's worth of observations about ME/CFS.  To me, the more interesting presentations are those that summarize their most recent research:  Klimas fits that mold.  If you're short on time, I would read the summary of her recent work (on Natural Killer Cells), plus Lipkin's.  And of course Montoya from the day before (on cytokines).