Having a condition that no one understands is bad enough. Having one that many also doubt the existence of is worse. Yet that has been the unenviable fate of millions of people diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome.
CFS first entered the medical lexicon in 1988 to describe a cluster of symptoms without an obvious cause that doctors were seeing in the Lake Tahoe area of Nevada. The principal symptom was debilitating tiredness, but people also complained of sore throats, headaches, muscle pain and various other manifestations of general malaise.
The lack of a clear biological cause, the fuzziness of the symptoms and the fact that many of the people diagnosed were young professionals opened the door to a smear campaign. The media were quick to dub CFS “yuppie flu”.
Although it has shaken off some of its more pejorative nicknames in recent years, CFS has struggled to lose the stigma. People with the syndrome still say they are not taken seriously, blamed for their illness, or accused of malingering. Treatments are often psychiatric, which are a great help to many but unintentionally add weight to the idea that CFS has no physical cause.
Now there is hope of a breakthrough. Researchers in Norway have been trialling a drug normally used to knock out white blood cells in people with lymphoma and rheumatoid arthritis. Two thirds of the people who took it experienced major remission of CFS symptoms, essentially returning to normal life, with bursts of vitality unthinkable while they were ill.
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Chronic fatigue breakthrough offers hope for millions
