US panel proposes new name and diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome

The condition known as myalgic encephalitis (ME) or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a serious, chronic multisystem disease that can cause significant impairment and disability, an expert panel convened by the US Institute of Medicine has concluded in a new report.1 “In its most severe form, this disease can consume the lives of those whom it afflicts. It is ‘real,’” the committee wrote.

The institute commissioned the committee to develop evidence based diagnostic criteria for ME/CFS but not to investigate the causes, pathophysiology, pathogenesis, or treatment of the syndrome. The committee’s chair was Ellen Wright Clayton, a professor of pediatrics and a professor of law at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. …