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ME/CFS South Australia Inc supports the needs of sufferers of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and related illnesses. We do this by providing services and information to members.
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ME/CFS South Australia Inc aims to keep members informed of various research projects, diets, medications, therapies, news items, etc. All communication, both verbal and written, is merely to disseminate information and not to make recommendations or directives.
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Advances In Understanding The Pathophysiology Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Saturday 20 July 2019
From the American Medical Association's medical journal JAMA:
 Dr Anthony L Komaroff |
Advances in Understanding the Pathophysiology of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
When does an illness become a disease? When the underlying biological abnormalities that cause the symptoms and signs of the illness are clarified.
The illness now called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) was first described in the mid-1980s. At that time, nothing was known about its underlying biology. Indeed, because many standard laboratory test results were normal, some clinicians explained to patients that “there is nothing wrong.” There was, of course, an alternative explanation: the standard laboratory tests might not have been the right tests to identify the underlying abnormalities.
Over the past 35 years, thousands of studies from laboratories in many countries have documented underlying biological abnormalities involving many organ systems in patients with ME/CFS, compared with healthy controls: in short, there is something wrong. Moreover, most of the abnormalities are not detected by standard laboratory tests. In 2015, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences concluded that ME/CFS “is a serious, chronic, complex systemic disease that often can profoundly affect the lives of patients,” affects up to an estimated 2.5 million people in the United States, and generates direct and indirect expenses of approximately $17 billion to $24 billion annually.1
Over the past several years, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has expanded its research efforts directed toward this disease. It has initiated an unusually comprehensive multisystem study at the NIH Clinical Center, funded 3 extramural ME/CFS research centers and 1 data coordinating center, awarded supplemental support to 7 existing grants, and held regular telebriefings on the illness (as has the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).2
A 2-day conference at the NIH in April 2019 highlighted recent progress. New research was presented that both reinforced and expanded on previous reports. Equally important, several plausible models were proposed that could explain many of the abnormalities that have been described.
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