Important events timeline


 * 1955, Royal Free Hospital outbreak in London, England, which led to the use of the name Myalgic Encephalomyelitis.
 * 1980, outbreak in Ayrshire, Scotland (1980-81 Ayrshire outbreak).
 * 1975, outbreak in Mercy San Juan Hospital, in a suburb of Sacramento, California, Unites States (1975 Sacramento outbreak).
 * 1984, disease outbreak in Incline Village near Lake Tahoe in California, 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.
 * 1994, Chronic fatigue syndrome criteria update to the 1994 Fukuda criteria.
 * 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.
 * 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