The puzzle of mysterious disease called ‘chronic-fatigue syndrome’ (CFS), which has long been defied classification due to its lesser known symptoms, seems to have finally solved by an HHS panel.
The committee which was commissioned by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) produced a ‘sure shot’ influential report on the disease, giving a clearer approach to its diagnosis and strongly recommending the disease to be entered to the ‘International Classification of Diseases’ or ICD-10– the book used by physicians around the world to make diagnoses.
The HHS panel also proposed a new name for the health condition: systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID).
The US Institute of Medicine (IOM) released the report on February 10.
The panelists said that the main idea behind giving a new name to the health condition is that it will help in better reflecting the main symptom of the disease, offering an evidence to its existence, which has remained dubious among the scientists.
Leonard Jason, a psychologist at Chicago’s DePaul University, expressed disagreement with the new name, saying the panel not adequately consulted over renaming.
He expressed hope that the patient advocacy groups will raise objection against the new name after finding fault in it.
“As a community psychiatrist who values citizen participation in critical decisions, I think this was a strategic mistake,” Jason said.
In contrast, the IOM panel members said that the new name could immensely help the patients suffering from the health condition, whose existence has long remained dubious even mocked by the experts group.
Ellen Wright Clayton, chairperson of the HHS committee, said, “If I never hear another person say ’I’m chronically fatigued too’… it won’t be too soon.”
Clayton is an expert of law and genetics at the Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Previous research works have shown that many physicians have raised doubts over the existence of CFS, while most of them even not knowing how to diagnose it.
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