Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - History

History

In 1934 an outbreak then referred to as atypical poliomyelitis (at the time it was considered a form of polio) occurred at the Los Angeles County Hospital. It strongly resembled what is now called chronic fatigue syndrome and affected a large number of nurses and doctors. In 1955 at the Royal Free Hospital in London, United Kingdom, another outbreak occurred that also affected mostly the hospital staff. Also resembling CFS, it was called both Royal Free disease and benign myalgic encephalomyelitis and formed the basis of descriptions by Acheson, Ramsay, and others. In 1969 benign myalgic encephalomyelitis was first classified into the International Classification of Diseases under Diseases of the nervous system.

The name chronic fatigue syndrome was used in the medical literature in 1987 to describe a condition resembling "chronic active Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection" but which presented no evidence of EBV as its cause. The initial case definition of CFS was published in 1988, "Chronic fatigue syndrome: a working case definition", (the Holmes definition), and displaced the name chronic Epstein-Barr virus syndrome. This research case definition was published after US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologists examined patients at the Lake Tahoe outbreak. In 2006 the CDC commenced a national program to educate the American public and health care professionals about CFS.

A 2009 study published in the journal "Science", reported an association between a retrovirus xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and CFS. The editors of Science, subsequently attached an "Editorial Expression of Concern" to the report to the effect that the validity of the study "is now seriously in question". and in September 2011, the authors published a "Partial Retraction" of their 2009 findings, this was followed by a full retraction by the magazine’s Editor in Chief after the authors failed to agree on a full retraction statement. Also in September 2011 the Blood XMRV Scientific Research Working Group published a report which concluded "that currently available XMRV/P-MLV assays, including the assays employed by the three participating laboratories that previously reported positive results on samples from CFS patients and controls (2, 4), cannot reproducibly detect direct virus markers (RNA, DNA, or culture) or specific antibodies in blood samples from subjects previously characterized as XMRV/P-MLV positive (all but one with a diagnosis of CFS) or healthy blood donors." In December 2011, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a similar retraction for an August 2010 paper.