RED Light Study for ME

In a previous newsletter we alluded to further research that is being planned at the centre.
One such piece of research involves a feasibility study that the charity has discussed with the research team since the end of last year.

Professor Glen Jeffery from UCL, who has been researching red light therapy for over 10 years, recently gave a presentation at the #BRMEC10 colloquium in June.

After discussions within the Quadram Institute last year, where the effects of this treatment for other conditions/scenarios were being evaluated, then the subject of ME was brought up (one of the advantages of concentrating on a centre hub model for ME as other research being conducted can bring in new ideas and knowledge).

The aim of using this red light therapy is to have the effect of boosting a recipient’s mitochondria.
The technique is to use special lamps that are set to a specific wavelength.

Here is an example of the research - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-02311-1

More details of the method is given in the link below.

The aim now is to see if this might be something that can help people with ME and also might be connected with the other research that the charity is funding including the clinical trial.

The Quadram team has been working with the ethics committee in order to present this study to patients with the correct regulatory procedures having been put in place and agreed. This inevitably has taken a good deal of time but the end result provides for a better and more robust study.

The ethics application was originally submitted to UEA ethics in the middle of May for review later that month. Feedback from the ethics committee required a number of amendments to be made before resubmission. These were associated with the use of the red lights and this led to a formal risk assessment being undertaken at Quadram. Following this all of the relevant safety precautions have been added to the study documents.

The ethics committee also requested that patient involvement and engagement should be undertaken in order to get ‘patients with lived experience’ to review the participant information sheet and instruction manuals for lamps and the activity monitor being used in association with the lamps, and provide feedback on the readability of the documents. This has now been set up using an online Microsoft forms.