After decades of uncertainty and suffering, science appears to have taken a giant step toward understanding one of the most mysterious diseases of modern times: chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS).
Chronic fatigue syndrome a hitherto invisible disease diagnosed with an iStock blood test
An experimental blood test, developed by British researchers, was able to identify the disease with 96% accuracy. The study was recently published in Journal of Translational Medicine.
The results could radically change the way the disease is diagnosed, which affects between 17 and 24 million people in the world, including millions of Romanians.
But how does this test work, what scientific discovery is behind it, and how close are we to a real diagnosis?
Chronic fatigue syndrome – a real disease, but invisible even to doctors
ME/CFS patients face not only profound exhaustion, muscle aches and trouble concentrating, but also mistrust of doctors. Without a clear test, many have been misdiagnosed, sometimes even accused of “overdoing it.”
“Without accurate and definitive tests, many patients have gone undiagnosed or been misdiagnosed for years”admits Dmitry Pshezhetskiy, a medical researcher at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain and the lead author of the study.
The new discovery, he says, “offers the potential of a blood test simple and accurate to confirm the diagnosis — which would mean earlier support and better targeted treatments.”
A blood test diagnoses chronic fatigue syndrome Photo Shutterstock
Blood test for chronic fatigue syndrome: epigenetic signature discovery
The researchers looked at epigenetic changes in the patients’ cells — ie “traces” chemicals that control how genes turn on or off.
These unique patterns appear to differ significantly between healthy individuals and those suffering from ME/CFS, thus providing the first potential biological biomarker for a disease that, until now, was diagnosed only based on symptoms and exclusions, as was the case with chronic fatigue.
Researchers caution: Chronic fatigue test results need validation
Although the results are promising, the scientific community remains cautious: the study was small, and the method needs to be validated on much larger samples from more countries.
However, the signal is clear: after years of frustrating research, the objective diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome could become a public health reality.
Hope for patients: a giant step toward diagnosing chronic fatigue syndrome
For patients struggling daily with constant overwhelming fatigue and the lack of a clear medical explanation, a simple blood test could mean more than a diagnosis.
It could finally mean recognition, treatment and hope. If the results are confirmed, the world of medicine could witness a revolution: the first biological evidence of a disease long considered “invisible”.
