News Blog

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health have identified a genetic explanation for a syndrome characterized by multiple frustrating and difficult-to-treat symptoms, including dizziness and lightheadedness, skin flushing and itching, gastrointestinal complaints, chronic pain, and bone and joint problems. Some people who experience these diverse symptoms have elevated levels of tryptase — a protein in…

Janet Dafoe received the following response from Francis Collins through Anna Eshoo regarding the urgent need for immediate increased NIH ME/CFS research funding. anna-eshoo-letter-10-10-16

For Cal High Alumnus and Stanford student Tom Camenzind, life has approached a standstill as the result of the disease M.E./C.F.S. M.E./C.F.S. affects no less than one to two million people in the U.S. The term itself, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, carries a provoking explanation: neuro inflammation of the brain and the spine. Individuals with the disease…

This week, demonstrations occurred in 25 global cities world-wide to focus attention on a neglected, devastating disease — Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME), an illness that also goes by the misleading name Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). At this event, the most powerful demonstrators were those who could not attend — the bedridden and housebound patients. The protest,…

There’s very little that science knows definitively about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, a disease characterized by often debilitating physical and mental exhaustion — researchers still haven’t been able to identify a cause, let alone a cure. But in 2011, a study published in The Lancet claimed that it had done exactly that: The data, the authors…

A chemical signature of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome suggests the disease may be caused by the body going into a semi-hibernation state, a study has said. Around 250,000 British people are affected by CFS, also known as ME. The disease causes the carrier to suffer from extreme exhaustion, and can strike suddenly, with no clear cause and few effective…

It is often dismissed as being all in the mind. But Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is real, doctors said today. They have shown that people with symptoms of the debilitating condition have a specific chemical signature in their blood. Bizarrely, the changes echo those seen in hibernating animals. The discovery that CFS leaves telltale signs in…

There are somewhere around one or two million Americans with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), a disease that often leaves sufferers barely able to move or think. But after decades in the dark, researchers have finally taken a step toward better understanding CFS: Among other things, the disease is correlated with a substantial decline in metabolites,…

For those who are wondering at the results and their implications, Naviaux’s study in a nutshell states that the cells of ME patients are in a sort of protective hibernation, limiting their consumption of resources and engaging in a hypometabolic state as a response to infection or other stressors.  By examining patients’ metabolites in detail,…

CHRONIC-FATIGUE SYNDROME, or CFS, which afflicts over 1m people in America and 250,000 in Britain, is certainly chronic and surely fatiguing. But is it truly a syndrome, a set of symptoms reliably associated together and thought to have a single underlying cause—in other words, a definable disease? CFS’s symptoms—debilitating exhaustion often accompanied by pain, muscle…