As has been widely reported, an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report released yesterday acknowledged that chronic fatigue syndrome is a real and serious disease and renamed the disorder “systemic exertion intolerance disease” to better reflect its key symptoms.
Stanford professor José Montoya, MD, who served as a reviewer on the IOM report, is featured in the video above, which accompanied Washington Post coverage of the development. The Post article goes on to say:
"We just needed to put to rest, once and for all, the idea that this is just psychosomatic or that people were making this up, or that they were just lazy," said Ellen Wright Clayton, a professor of pediatrics and law at Vanderbilt University, who chaired the committee of the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although the cause of the disorder is still unknown, the panel established three critical symptoms for the condition (also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis):
- A sharp reduction in the ability to engage in pre-illness activity levels that lasts for more than six months and is accompanied by deep fatigue that only recently developed.
- Worsening of symptoms after any type of exertion, including "physical, cognitive or emotional stress."
- Sleep that doesn't refresh the sufferer.
The panel also requires that a patient have one of two other disease manifestations, either cognitive impairment or orthostatic intolerance. Orthostatic intolerance is an autonomic nervous system disorder that is caused by an abnormal increase in heart rate and low blood pressure, believed to be triggered by the disease.
Susan Kruetzer, an SEID patient interviewed by Erin Allday in this San Francisico Chronicle article, expressed guarded optimism about the report’s ability to generate more research funding and patient support, saying “What I want to see is someone in Congress get pretty riled up by this report — have them see how many people are affected, how these people are really ill, how they’ve been mistreated,” Kreutzer said. “I’d just like to light a fire. I don’t know if this report will do that, but I suppose it gives us some ammunition.”
Previously: Some headway on chronic fatigue syndrome: Brain abnormalities pinpointed, Unbroken: A chronic fatigue syndrome patient’s long road to recovery and Deciphering the puzzle of chronic fatigue syndrome
