Below you will find a list of the ten key discoveries of CFS research over the past 20 years. You can read the entire summary at this link from the CFIDS Association of America. This research summary was provided by Dr. Anthony Komaroff, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He is also the senior physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and the editor-in-chief of Harvard Health Publications.
1. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is not a form of depression and many patients with CFS have no diagnosable psychiatric disorder.
2. There’s a state of chronic, low-grade immune activation in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
3. There is substantial evidence of poorly functioning natural killer cells, which are the white blood cells vital in in fighting viral infections.
4. Abnormalities in the white matter of the brain have been found in CFS patients using MRI scans.
5. Abnormalities in brain metabolism have been discovered.
6. CFS patients experience abnormalities in multiple neuroendocrine systems in the brain: hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.
7. Cognitive impairment is commonly found in CFS patients.
8. Abnormalities of the autonomic nervous system have been found by several independent researchers.
9. CFS patients have disordered expression of genes that are important in energy metabolism.
10. There is evidence of more frequent latent active infection of Epstein Barr, HHV-6, and cytomegalovirus.
My healthy 14 yr old daughter immediately became ill after receiving her HEP B shot, later to be diagnosed with CFS which 9 years later has completely diminished her potential. After reading countless articles on CFS why don’t I read anything about the correlation between CFS and immunizations? My daughter is not the only child this has happened to. Our immunologist and infectious disease specialist told me the HEP B shot does cause CFS. One book I read stated there were numerous teachers, airline industry personnel and nurses who are diagnosed with CFS. It would appear this population of professionals is mandated to take HEP B imms or other imms for that matter as part of their conditions of employment. It doesn’t take Einstein to see a common denominator here. Perhaps that is why more women are diagnosed with CFS is because they are traditionally nurses and teachers and they have had to receive imms as part of their employment. Why don’t we just stick to polio and the MMR and see if the incidences of autism and CFS decline or would that be to financially crippling for the US drug companies???
Hi Karen, I will have to see what I can find regarding Hep B and CFS. I think a lot of these vaccines and such our children are “required” to have are causing more harm than good.
Good luck to you and your family.
I had a Hep B vaccine five years into my illness and do I wish I hadn’t! It really made it much worse and screwed up what little life I had left. There IS a link. It may be that immunizations pave the way for other microbes (such as enteroviruses, herpes viruses, mosquito borne “River” and “Nile” viruses, etc.) and/or that vaccines are genetically contributing to viruses to change their pathology. This link is explored some by researchers such as Byron Hyde and Richardson (See “The Clinical and Scientific Basis for M.E./CFS”.) While polio and non-polio enterovirus Myalgic Encephaolomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome is the basic model, research is showing that certain folks are susceptible to viral infections and a number of viruses can cause the illness(es.) Make sure that you look at recent success with Valgancyclovir at Stanford with herpes virus predominant M.E./CFS (Dr. Montoya.) Also, do not neglect recent research (also indicated in Hyde, Richardson, recent Cheney, Lerner, et all) that there is a serious cardiac and vascular part of the disease (diastolic cardiomyopathy dysfunction) that can cause as much or more of the dysfunction than the brain elements.