Important events timeline

From MEpedia, a crowd-sourced encyclopedia of ME and CFS science and history
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Victorian Period[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1869 George Miller Beard coined the term "neurasthenia." He thought it was an especially American affliction of nervous exhaustion, affected men who were "brain workers" and women who advanced too far in their education.
?? Jean-Martin Charcot - hysteria. Many of his patients were suffering from epilepsy. Influence on Sigmund Freud and the concept of functional disorders.

Early 20th century[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1934 Atypical poliomyelitis - an outbreak at Los Angeles County Hospital of a disease "resembling poliomyelitis" was recorded.

1950s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1955 Royal Free Hospital outbreak in London, England, which led to the use of the name Myalgic encephalomyelitis.

1960s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1969 Myalgic encephalomyelitis classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a neurological disease.[1]

1970s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1975 Outbreak in Mercy San Juan Hospital, in a suburb of Sacramento, California, Unites States
1976 ME Association charity founded in UK

1980s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1980 Outbreak in Ayrshire, Scotland (1980-81 Ayrshire outbreak).
1984 Disease outbreak in Incline Village near Lake Tahoe in Nevada, United States.
1984 Disease outbreak in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States(1984 Chapel Hill outbreak).
1985 Disease outbreak in Lyndonville, New York, United States (1985 Lyndonville outbreak).
1988 First definition of Chronic fatigue syndrome produced, later updated in 1994.

1990s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
1994 Chronic fatigue syndrome criteria update to the 1994 Fukuda criteria.
1994 September Publication of the 1994 National Task Force Report on CFS/PVFS/ME by Westcare UK, notably the London criteria
1996 Osler's Web: Inside the Labyrinth of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic by Hillary Johnson is published chronicling the governmental inaction and fraud in investigating ME/CFS

2000s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
2003 Canadian Consensus Criteria is developed by Bruce Carruthers, et al.
2009 Publication of the Judy Mikovits study in Science claiming a link between Chronic fatigue syndrome and the XMRV retrovirus.
2009 Preliminary research published by Norwegian researchers proposes assessment of the use of cancer drug Rituximab to treat the disease.

2010s[edit | edit source]

Year Date Event
2011 International Consensus Criteria is developed by Bruce Carruthers, et al.
2011 The controversial British PACE trial is published in The Lancet, recommending cognitive behavioral therapy and graded exercise therapy as treatments.
2011 The Science journal retracts the XMRV paper.
2015 The Institute of Medicine report is released: "Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Redefining an illness", which reviewed thousands of articles, and concluded that "ME/CFS is a serious, chronic, complex and multisystem disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected patients" (p. 209). The report recommended new diagnostic criteria, and a new name for the condition: Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease (SEID).
2015 Francis Collins announces the intent of the National Institutes of Health to take the disease more seriously.
2015 The Open Medicine Foundation announces its End ME/CFS Project, led by Ronald Davis, has support of three Nobel prize laureates.
2016 National Institutes of Health, United States begins study of ME/CFS patient in their in-house Clinical Center in Bethesda

See also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. World Health Organization (1969). International Classification of Diseases (PDF). 2 (Eighth revision ed.). Geneva: WHO. p. 173. Encephalomyelitis (chronic),
    (myalgic, benign) 323