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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chronic_fatigue_syndrome

Timeline

Several descriptions of illness resembling those of chronic fatigue syndrome have been reported for at least two hundred years.[1] In the 19th century neurologist George Miller Beard popularised the concept of neurasthenia with symptoms including fatigue, anxiety, headache, impotence, neuralgia and depression.[2] This concept remained popular well into the 20th century, eventually coming to be seen as a behavioural rather than physical condition, with a diagnosis that excluded postviral syndromes. Neurasthenia has largely been abandoned as a medical diagnosis.[3] The ICD-10 system of the World Health Organization now categorizes neurasthenia under (F48 Other neurotic disorders) which specifically excludes chronic fatigue syndrome.[4]

In 1938, Alexander Gilliam described an illness that resembled poliomyelitis, interviewing patients and reviewing records of one of several clusters which had occurred in Los Angeles, United States in 1934.[5] The Los Angeles County Hospital outbreak included all or most of its nurses and doctors.[6] Gilliam called the outbreak "atypical poliomyelitis" and described the symptoms as: rapid muscle weakness, vasomotor instability, clonic twitches and cramps, ataxia, severe pain (usually aggravated by exercise), neck and back stiffness, menstrual disturbance and dominant sensory involvement.

Novices and convent candidates at a Wisconsin convent were diagnosed with "encephalitis" in 1936. Two towns in Switzerland had outbreaks of "abortive poliomyelitis" in 1937, and 73 Swiss soldiers were given the same diagnosis in 1939. Outbreaks in Iceland were called "Akureyri disease" or "simulating poliomyelitis" and were later called "Iceland disease." 800 people in Adelaide, Australia became ill during 1949-1951 with a disease "resembling poliomyelitis." Two smaller clusters in the United States during 1950 were diagnosed as "Epidemic neuromyasthenia" and "resembling Iceland disease simulating acute anterior poliomyelitis." Additional outbreaks of poliomyelitis-like "mystery diseases" occurred from the 1950s through the 1980s in Denmark, the United States, South Africa, and Australia, among others.[6]

Several outbreaks of a polio-resembling illness occurred in Britain in the 1950s.[7] A 1955 outbreak at the Royal Free Hospital Group was later called Royal Free disease or benign myalgic encephalomyelitis.[8][9] After the Royal Free Hospital outbreak, a disorder with similar symptoms was found among the general population and the epidemic form came to be considered the exception.[citation needed] Pathology findings, both in monkeys[10] and in rare human casualties,[11] led to the conclusion that the disorder was caused by inflammation of the brain and the spinal cord, particularly the afferent nerve roots, perhaps with neuroimmune etiology.[12]

In the 1960s and 1970s, chronic fatigue symptoms were often attributed to chronic brucellosis, but typically people were seen as having psychiatric disorders, in particular depression.[6] Epidemic cases of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis were called mass hysteria by psychiatrists McEvedy and Beard in 1970,[13] provoking criticism in letters to the editor of the British Medical Journal by outbreak researchers, attending physicians, and physicians who fell ill.[14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] The psychiatrists were faulted for not adequately investigating the patients they described,[23] and their conclusions have been refuted.[3][24][25] In 1978 a symposium held at the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) concluded that epidemic myalgic encephalomyelitis was a distinct disease entity with a clear organic basis.[26]

The illness gained national attention in the United States when the popular magazine Hippocrates ran a cover story of an epidemic at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, in the mid-1980s.[27] The designation Chronic Epstein-Barr Virus was in use in the U.S.,[28][29] but the magazine used the term "Raggedy Ann Syndrome" to note the fatigue and loss of muscle power patients felt.[30]

Researchers investigating the Lake Tahoe cluster did not find evidence that EBV was involved, and they proposed the name chronic fatigue syndrome, describing the main symptom of the illness.[31][32] They published the first working case definition for CFS in 1988.[33] Research increased considerably, and more so after the criteria were relaxed in 1994.[34]

In 1990, researchers presented evidence they found DNA sequences very similar to the human HTLV-II retrovirus in some CFS patients, at a conference in Kyoto, Japan.[35][36] Their study was later published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[37] A reporter on Prime Time Live stated the announcement made headlines all over the world. The CDC first ignored their findings,[38] then later conducted a study and published a paper that refuted the hypothesis.[39]

In the United Kingdom, the Chief Medical Officer Kenneth Calman requested a report from the medical Royal Colleges in 1996. This led to the publication of a joint report in which the term "chronic fatigue syndrome" was found to be most representative.[40] This was followed in 2002 by a further report by the new CMO, Liam Donaldson.[41]

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) recognize CFS as a serious illness and launched a campaign in June 2006 to raise public and medical awareness about it.[42][43]

A 2009 study published in the journal Science reported an association between a retrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and CFS. The editors of Science subsequently attached an "Editorial Expression of Concern" to the report to the effect that the validity of the study "is now seriously in question".[44] and in September 2011, the authors published a "Partial Retraction" of their 2009 findings,[45] this was followed by a full retraction by the magazine’s Editor in Chief after the authors failed to agree on a full retraction statement.[46] Also in September 2011, the Blood XMRV Scientific Research Working Group published a report which concluded "that currently available XMRV/P-MLV assays, including the assays employed by the three participating laboratories that previously reported positive results on samples from CFS patients and controls (2, 4), cannot reproducibly detect direct virus markers (RNA, DNA, or culture) or specific antibodies in blood samples from subjects previously characterized as XMRV/P-MLV positive (all but one with a diagnosis of CFS) or healthy blood donors."[47] In December 2011, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a similar retraction for an August 2010 paper.[48] Some members of the patient community, who had viewed the XMRV findings as a source of hope for a possible cure, initially reacted negatively when they were called into question. One UK researcher reported verbal abuse after publishing an early paper indicating that the XMRV studies were flawed.[49]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome#History

History

Myalgic encephalomyelitis[edit] From 1934 onwards, outbreaks of a previously unknown illness began to be recorded by doctors.[67][68] Initially considered to be occurrences of poliomyelitis, the illness was subsequently referred to as "epidemic neuromyasthenia".[68] In the 1950s, the term "benign myalgic encephalomyelitis" was used in relation to a comparable outbreak at the Royal Free Hospital in London.[69] The descriptions of each outbreak were varied but included symptoms of malaise, tender lymph nodes, sore throat, pain, and signs of encephalomyelitis.[70] The cause of the condition was not identified although it appeared to be infectious, and the term "benign myalgic encephalomyelitis" was chosen to reflect the lack of mortality, the severe muscular pains, evidence of damage to the nervous system, and to the presumed inflammatory nature of the disorder.[67] The syndrome appeared in sporadic as well as epidemic cases[71] and in 1969, benign myalgic encephalomyelitis appeared as an entry to the International Classification of Diseases under Diseases of the nervous system.[72]

The authors of a review of 15 outbreaks of benign myalgic encephalomyelitis, carried out in 1970, concluded that these were psychosocial phenomena caused by either mass hysteria on the part of the patients or altered medical perception of the community.[73] These conclusions were based on the higher prevalence of the disease in females in whom there was a lack of physical signs. On that basis the authors recommended that the disease be renamed "myalgia nervosa". Despite strong refutation by Dr. Melvin Ramsay, the proposed psychological etiology created great controversy and convinced health professionals that this was a plausible explanation for the condition.[74]

The continued work of Dr. Ramsay demonstrated that, although the disease rarely resulted in mortality, it was often severely disabling.[75] Because of this, Ramsay proposed that the prefix "benign" be dropped.[69][76][77] In 1986, Dr. Ramsay published the first diagnostic criteria for ME, in which the condition was characterized by:

a form of muscle fatigability where, even after minimal physical effort, 3 or more days elapse before full muscle power is restored; extraordinary variability or fluctuation of symptoms even in the course of one day; an alarming chronicity.[78] Chronic Fatigue Syndrome[edit] In the mid-1980s, two large outbreaks of an illness which resembled mononucleosis drew national attention in the United States. Located in Nevada and New York, the outbreaks involved an illness which was characterized by "chronic or recurrent debilitating fatigue and various combinations of other symptoms, including sore throat, lymph node pain and tenderness, headache, myalgia, and arthralgias". An initial link to the Epstein-Barr virus saw the illness acquire the name "chronic Epstein-Barr virus syndrome".[47][79]

The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention convened a working group tasked with reaching a consensus on the clinical features of the illness. Meeting in 1987, the working group concluded that CFS was not new and that the many different names given to it previously reflected widely differing concepts of the illness's etiology and epidemiology.[80] The CDC working group chose "chronic fatigue syndrome" as a more neutral and inclusive name for the illness but noted that "myalgic encephalomyelitis" was widely accepted in other parts of the world.[47] The first definition of CFS was published in 1988 and although the cause of the illness remained unknown, there were several attempts to update this definition, most notably in 1994.[45] In 2006, the CDC commenced a national program to educate the American public and health care professionals about CFS.[81]

Other medical terms[edit] A range of both theorised and confirmed medical entities and naming conventions have appeared historically in the medical literature dealing with ME and CFS, these include:

Epidemic neuromyasthenia: a term used for outbreaks with symptoms resembling poliomyelitis.[82][83] Iceland disease and Akureyri disease :synonymous terms used for an outbreak of fatigue symptoms in Iceland.[84] Low natural killer syndrome, a term, used mainly in Japan, reflecting research showing diminished in-vitro activity of natural killer cells (NKs) isolated from patients.[85][86] Neurasthenia has been proposed as an historical diagnosis that occupied a similar medical and cultural space to CFS.[87] Royal Free disease: named after the historically significant outbreak in 1955 at the Royal Free Hospital used as an informal synonym for "benign myalgic encephalomyelitis"[88] Tapanui Flu: a term commonly used in New Zealand, deriving from the name of a town where numerous people suffered from the syndrome.[89]