Description of a Case with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity in Combination with Neurotoxic Disease and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 2025, Hill et al

[forestglip]

Description of a Case with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity in Combination with Neurotoxic Disease and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Hill, Hans- Ulrich; Huber, Wolfgang

Abstract
Here we present a case of a lady, called Mrs. P., a shop assistant of a wholesale market for agricultural device and chemicals, who had been exposed to many different toxic chemicals during her professional work that caused severe symptoms of a disease like Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) combined with a disease that corresponded to a Toxic Encephalopathy and a Chronic Fatigue at the same time. This case had been examined by a detailed expert opinion for getting a compensation by the health insurance. But this did not succeed, as in Germany illnesses of environmental origin were not regarded as scientifically proved. The patient suffers up to now under continuing severe complaints without help or therapy by medical doctors and the health insurance.

The case presented here appears to be an example for the publication of Hill and Huber (2025)1 that describes connections of the pathologic mechanisms between MCS and neurodegenerative diseases. The symptoms of the affected lady are consequences of mechanisms that appear during diseases such as MCS, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease and Toxic Encehalopathy because of neurotoxic effects of the chemicals involved here. The multiple exposure to different highly toxic chemicals had been documented by the list of products that are sold by the wholesale market for agriculture, that was the workplace of the concerned lady in Germany.

The purpose of this publication is to strengthen our demand to the responsible institutions of health care and environmental policy in Germany to take action to verify precaution and to avoid exposures to toxic chemicals such as pesticides and other toxic organic chemicals at work places and in agricultural activities not only in Germany.

The information about the disease status of the concerned lady called “Mrs. P.” has been collected from medical certificates and receipts, by a questionnaire and by personal reports of the patient. This investigation leads to the conclusion that Mrs. P. suffers from a severe disease since the beginning of her work at the wholesale market in the year 2000 up to her incapacity to work as consequence of her disease 12 Years later. The disease caused an inability to manage every day-´tasks at work and even at home, with severe restrictions of her common life quality.

Web | DOI | Medical Research Archives | Open Access

 

[Utsikt]

4.3. CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME (CFS/ME), MITOCHONDRIAL DYSFUNCTION (“MITOCHONDRIO- PATHIA”)

The symptoms reported from Mrs. P., which are characterized by a severe general exhaustion and physical weakness, correspond to another clinical picture, namely a Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Myalgic Encephalopathy (CFS/ME). 32 CFS/ME has been listed since many years under the code ICD10, G. 93.3.30

This means that CFS/ME is not a syndrome of psychogenic origin, but it is based on well known biochemical mechanisms of a chronic inflammatory multisystemic disease, by which chemicals or other environmental factors such as viruses like corona or herpes like human cytomegalovirus (HCMV), or retroviruses initiate complex mechanisms of inflammation.

Once activated the cells of the inborn immune system secrete cytokines as messengers of inflammation in the brain, and as a result, they cause the symptoms of the general exhaustion. These mechanisms of inflammation may also be triggered by the metabolism of foreign substances. They are connected to the production of oxygen- and nitrogen-radicals, which inhibit the oxidative respiratory chain in the mitochondria.4, 25

This mechanism leads to an energy deficiency syndrome, which is based on a deficiency of the mitochondria to produce Adenosine-triphosphate (ATP), the energy exchanger substance of the cell metabolism. Because of the lack of ATP in the whole body the action of muscles and the brain functions are diminished. So energy deficiency syndromes like that had been named as “Mitochondriopathy”.31

The syndrome of CFS/ME is characterized by a list of symptoms as it has been published by Carruthers et al. (2003).32 These symptoms mainly concern the physical and mental state of exhaustion, which lead to a fundamental decrease of the general life activity of the concerning persons.

The physical and mental load capacity is unusually diminished, cognitive decline is often observed. Pain of muscles, joints, head, and the nervous system are frequently seen, also sleep disorder, deficits of concentration and memory, confusion, disorientation, problems of information processing, a difficulty of finding words, sensory perception disorders, hypersensivity towards light and noise. The functions of the autonomic nervous system such as control of blood pressure, heart-rhythm, the intestine functions, the kidney and its urine production are disturbed or diminished.

As the inflammation mechanisms occur primarily in the brain, they resemble those that are above mentioned as “Neurogenic Inflammation”, which is also characteristic for diseases like toxic encephalopathy. Therefore, the addition “ME” to the designation of the disease “CFS/ME” means “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis” and concerns mechanisms that occur also during diseases like officially acknowledged that the disease MCS can be “Toxic Encephalopathy”.