neurovirology
Moving Toward Answers in ME/CFS
Posted on by Dr. Walter Koroshetz and Dr. Francis Collins
Thinkstock/Katarzyna Bialasiewicz
Updated September 27, 2017: The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will award four grants to establish a coordinated scientific research effort on myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS). The total cost of the projects for fiscal year 2017 will be over $7 million, with support from multiple NIH Institutes and Centers that are part of the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group.
The grants will support the creation of a consortium made up of three Collaborative Research Centers (CRC) and a Data Management Coordinating Center (DMCC). The CRCs will each conduct independent research but will also collaborate on several projects, forming a network to help advance knowledge on ME/CFS. The data will be managed by the DMCC and will be shared among researchers within the CRCs and more broadly with the research community.
Imagine going to work or school every day, working out at the gym, spending time with family and friends—basically, living your life in a full and vigorous way. Then one day, you wake up, feeling sick. A bad cold maybe, or perhaps the flu. A few days pass, and you think it should be over—but it’s not, you still feel achy and exhausted. Now imagine that you never get better— plagued by unrelenting fatigue not relieved by sleep. Any exertion just makes you worse. You are forced to leave your job or school and are unable to participate in any of your favorite activities; some days you can’t even get out of bed. The worst part is that your doctors don’t know what is wrong and nothing seems to help.
Unfortunately, this is not fiction, but reality for at least a million Americans—who suffer from a condition that carries the unwieldy name of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), a perplexing disease that biomedical research desperately needs to unravel [1]. Very little is currently known about what causes ME/CFS or its biological basis [2]. Among the many possibilities that need to be explored are problems in cellular metabolism and changes in the immune system.
