ATLANTA – Chronic fatigue syndrome appears to result from something in people’s genetic makeup that reduces their ability to deal with physical and psychological stress, researchers reported Thursday.
The research is being called some of the first credible scientific evidence that genetics, when combined with stress, can bring on chronic fatigue syndrome – a condition so hard to diagnose and so poorly understood that some question whether it is a real ailment.
Researchers said the findings could help lead to better means of diagnosing and treating chronic fatigue syndrome and predicting those who are likely to develop the disorder, which is characterized by extreme, persistent exhaustion.
“The results are ground-breaking,” said Dr. William Reeves of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Reeves said the study demonstrates that people with chronic fatigue syndrome are unable to deal with everyday challenges and adversity. That could include injuries, illnesses, divorce, even stressful jobs, the researchers said.
The CDC estimates more than 1 million Americans have the condition, with women suffering at four times the rate among men.
The research is contained in a collection of 14 articles published in this month’s issue of Pharmacogenomics, a scientific journal.
Chronic fatigue syndrome is a complex illness characterized by at least six months of severe fatigue that is not helped by bed rest. Patients also report such symptoms as muscle pain and impaired memory.
The cause has never been identified, and there are no specific tests for it. It was first identified in the 1980s, but many people – including some health professionals – have greeted patients with skepticism, regarding it as the complaint of “a bunch of hysterical upper-class white women,” said Reeves, who heads the CDC’s chronic fatigue syndrome research program.
The CDC research joins a cluster of studies published in the past eight months that implicate certain genes and gene expressions as a contributing factor to the condition, said Kim McCleary, president of the Charlotte, N.C.-based Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Association of America.
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