Moving Toward Answers in ME/CFS - NIH Director's Blog (2017)

Moving Toward Answers in ME/CFS - NIH Director's Blog (2017) by Dr. Walter Koroshetz and Dr. Francis Collins about ME/CFS, onset and symptoms, and biomedical research.

Illness onset and symptoms

 * A bad cold or the flu where a person does not recover
 * Achy and exhausted
 * Unrelenting fatigue not relieved by sleep
 * Exertion makes one worse
 * Forced to leave job or school, cannot participate in favorite activities
 * At times cannot get out of bed

Excerpt


 * Imagine going to work or school every day, working out at the gym, spending time with family and friends—basically, living your life in a full and vigorous way. Then one day, you wake up, feeling sick. A bad cold maybe, or perhaps the flu. A few days pass, and you think it should be over—but it’s not, you still feel achy and exhausted. Now imagine that you never get better— plagued by unrelenting fatigue not relieved by sleep. Any exertion just makes you worse. You are forced to leave your job or school and are unable to participate in any of your favorite activities; some days you can’t even get out of bed. The worst part is that your doctors don’t know what is wrong and nothing seems to help.

References biomedical research

 * Cytokine
 * Metabolic and Dauer
 * Damaged Calcium Receptors Potential biomarker
 * Immune system and autoimmune process

Excerpt


 * A number of studies suggest that abnormalities in cellular metabolism, a complex biological process that the body uses to create energy [3][4][5], may underlie ME/CFS. A recent study of metabolite pathways in blood samples from people with ME/CFS reported a signature suggestive of a hypometabolic condition, similar to a phenomenon biologists have studied in other organisms and refer to by the term “dauer” (a hibernation-like state) [5]. A number of other studies have suggested that changes in the immune system may play a causal role in ME/CFS [6][7][8], either due to a post-infectious autoimmune process or due to a unknown chronic infection.

Recognizes studies, groups and workshops

 * Institute of Medicine report (SEID criteria developed by this study)
 * Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group
 * Pathways to prevention report (P2P)

Learn more

 * National Institutes of Health (NIH)
 * National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)