What Is ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myalgic_Encephalomyelitis
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is one of several names given to a poorly understood, highly debilitating disorder of uncertain cause/causes, which is thought to affect approximately 4 per 1,000 adults[1] in the United States and other countries, and a smaller fraction of children.[2]
The disorder is marked by chronic mental and physical exhaustion, often severe, and by other specific symptoms, arising in previously healthy and active persons.
Despite promising avenues of research, there remains no objective assay or pathological finding which is widely accepted to be diagnostic of CFS.
It remains largely a diagnosis of exclusion, made on the basis of patient history and symptomatic criteria, although a number of tests exist which can help aid diagnosis.[3]
Although there is agreement on the genuine threat to health, happiness, and productivity posed by CFS, various physicians' groups, researchers, and patient activists champion very different nomenclature, diagnostic criteria, etiologic hypotheses, and favored treatments, resulting in ongoing controversy about nearly all aspects of the disorder.
The name chronic fatigue syndrome is itself controversial, with some patient advocates and other authorities preferring terms such as
myalgic encephalomyelitis (\"ME\" or \"ME/CFS\") and post-viral fatigue syndrome (\"PVFS\"), which imply specific underlying etiologies or pathologic processes.[4]
Chronic fatigue syndrome is not the same as \"chronic fatigue”.
While fatigue is a common symptom in many illnesses, CFS is a multi-symptom disease and is relatively rare by comparison.[5]
Definitions (other than the 1991 UK Oxford criteria[6]) require a number of features, the most common being severe mental and physical exhaustion which is \"unrelieved by rest\" (according to the 1994 Fukuda definition),[7] and may be worsened by even trivial exertion (a mandatory diagnostic criterion according to some systems).
Most diagnostic criteria insist that the symptoms must be present for at least six months, and all insist on there being no other cause for them: i.e. the symptoms must be idiopathic, not caused by other medical conditions such as diabetes, hypothyroidism or anemia.
CFS patients may report many other symptoms which are not included in all diagnostic criteria, including muscle weakness, cognitive dysfunction, hypersensitivity, orthostatic intolerance, digestive disturbances, depression, poor immune response, and cardiac and respiratory problems.
It is unclear if these symptoms represent co-morbid conditions or are produced by the same underlying etiology as CFS itself.[8]
Some cases improve over time, and treatments (though none are universally accepted) bring a degree of improvement to many others, though resolution is rare.
CFS occurs more often, but not exclusively, in women, for unknown reasons.
CFS is most easily diagnosed when formerly active adults become ill, and is most commonly diagnosed in young to middle aged adults, although it is also reported in children, adolescents and the elderly.[9]
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