ME/CFS - An Overview of an Underappreciated Disease

Sly Saint

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
A discussion of the symptoms, epidemiology, diagnostic criteria, pathogenesis, treatment, and prognosis of ME/CFS. For more information, I recommend checking out: me-pedia.org Because I anticipate it may be the most controversial topic raised in the video, the hypothesis that ME and CFS may be overlapping but distinct conditions is discussed in this paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...




(I watched it and found it reasonably informative and balanced)
 
When discussing the claim that ME, CFS and SEID are distinct clinical entities based solely on their definitions / diagnostic criteria, I find it helpful to remember these two comments on one of Frank Twisk’s papers from @Trish and @Jonathan Edwards (bolding mine):

I think Twist has got this in a muddle.

Reiter's syndrome and reactive arthritis are defined differently and have some overlap and some not. But a doctor would not say they are distinct clinical entities. They would say there is a spectrum and that the most typical cases fit both definitions. That would be the way I see ME.

The fact that definitions are not the same does not mean that what they are trying to describe are separate entities. It just means that the definitions are different.

I find it an interesting exercise, but are we really any the wiser?

It's a bit like asking three people to describe an animal's key features. One says it has an elongated nose as it's defining feature, another a bulky body, and the third big flappy ears, each listing several other features as secondary.

You then draw a lovely Venn diagram showing they are not the same animal on the basis of those definitions, but they have some overlapping features.

You still don't know if all three are describing an elephant, or they are actually an elephant, a rhino and Prince Charles.
 
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