Mrs Kay Gilderdale admitted aiding and abetting the suicide of her seriously-ill daughter, Lynn, when she appeared in court today.

A number of drugs which act on the body's immune system (immunomodulatory drugs) have been suggested as possible forms of treatment for sub-groups of people with ME/CFS.  These drugs include Ampligen, immunoglobulin, alpha interferon, inosine pranobex/Imunovir and tumour necrosis factor alpha inhibitors.  Unfortunately, the results from clinical trials so far have failed to demonstrate any really consistent and significant benefits.  So most doctors in the UK do not use immunomodulatory drugs for people with ME/CFS.

The Prime Minister's Office responded on July 1 to a petition signed by almost 5,000 people at the Number 10 website which called for attendance at the highest levels at this year's Invest in ME international research conference, held in Westminster on May 29. Unusually, the response started with a bit of an apology...

Just a reminder – the next meeting and AGM of the All Party Parliamentary Group on ME will take place on Wednesday, July 8 and, according to the Agenda, anyone requiring any changes to the Minutes to be considered should email them to the Secretariat by close of play on Monday, July 1,

The ME Association's annual 'ME Question Time' will move this year to Chichester – where we shall be joining forces with reMEmber on Saturday, September 19.

Home carers who want to explore ways in which they can develop their important skills are being offered the space in which to so by the National Extension College - and it won't cost them a penny!

The ME Association is delighted to announce that a provisional abstract and paper on research into gene expression, funded by our Ramsay Research Fund, has today been published by BMC Medical Genomics.

The next meeting of the APPG on ME will be held on Wednesday 8 July 2009, in Committee Room 19, House of Commons, from 1.30pm to 3pm. Please note this change of venue - previously, the meeting was planned for Committee Room 20. The meeting will contain the Annual General Meeting and the future work of the APPG will be discussed.

The patient questionnaire for the All Party Parliamentary Group inquiry into NHS services for people with ME is now available on the APPG website. The deadline for completed questionnaires, either by email or post, is 20 July 2009. Note: the inquiry only relates to NHS services in England, as NHS services in other parts of the UK are outside the remit of the Westminster Parliament.

The Minutes of the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on ME dated 1 April 2009 can be viewed as a downloadable Word document by clicking here.

For a trial period of a year, a verbatim transcript of the meeting by a Hansard transcriber is also being made available. The transcript of the 1 April 2009 meeting can also be read as downloadable Word document by clicking here.

As part of the information gathering process in relation to establishing a UK post-mortem and tissue bank for ME/CFS research, Dr Charles Shepherd visited the Medical Research Council's Brain Banks in Edinburgh last week - where he met with Dr Colin Smith and Professor James Ironside.

In response to a number of requests received this week, the ME Association has issued the following note about swine flu.

There is a growing number of specialist NHS services in England for people with ME/CFS. We hope to be publishing information shortly about similar services in Scotland and Wales.