Ercoli, Giuseppe, Selway-Clarke, Hugh, Truijen, Dena et al. · Clinical & translational immunology · 2024 · DOI
This study compared how well people with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and ME/CFS patients can fight off a common bacterial infection called Streptococcus pneumoniae. Researchers found that RA patients had weaker immune responses to this bacteria compared to ME/CFS patients, which may explain why RA patients get pneumonia more often. The study also looked at how a common RA treatment (rituximab, which depletes B cells) affected these immune responses.
This research is important because it provides evidence that RA-associated immunosuppression differs fundamentally from ME/CFS, validating ME/CFS as a useful disease control group. For ME/CFS researchers and patients, this study demonstrates that ME/CFS patients maintain relatively preserved adaptive immune responses to bacterial antigens, which may have implications for understanding infection susceptibility differences between these conditions. Understanding these immune distinctions could inform research into why certain diseases are associated with increased infection risk.
This study does not prove that impaired S. pneumoniae immunity directly causes pneumonia in RA patients—only that the association exists. The findings are specific to this bacterial antigen and cannot be generalized to all infections or immune responses. Additionally, the study does not establish whether RA itself or its treatments are primarily responsible for the observed immune impairment, though rituximab's role is partially explored.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Ercoli, Giuseppe, Selway-Clarke, Hugh, Truijen, Dena, Folkmanaite, Milda, Oulton, Tate, Norris-Grey, Caitlin, et al. (2024). Naturally acquired adaptive immunity to <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> is impaired in rheumatoid arthritis patients.. Clinical & translational immunology. https://doi.org/10.1002/cti2.70012
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-ercoli-2024-naturally-acquired,
author = {Ercoli, Giuseppe and Selway-Clarke, Hugh and Truijen, Dena and Folkmanaite, Milda and Oulton, Tate and Norris-Grey, Caitlin and Nakajima, Rie and Felgner, Philip and Wren, Brendan W and Tetteh, Kevin and Croucher, Nicholas J and Leandro, Maria and Cambridge, Geraldine and Brown, Jeremy S},
title = {Naturally acquired adaptive immunity to <i>Streptococcus pneumoniae</i> is impaired in rheumatoid arthritis patients.},
journal = {Clinical & translational immunology},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1002/cti2.70012},
note = {PubMed: 39416767},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ercoli-2024-naturally-acquired},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/ercoli-2024-naturally-acquired
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