CDC's Dr Unger: CFS is defined by a post-exertional fatigue which can be measured via a blood test

Toni Whistler, James F Jones, Elizabeth R Unger and Suzanne D Vernon*:

Address: Viral Exanthems and Herpesvirus Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
Email: Toni Whistler - taw6@cdc.gov; James F Jones - jaj9@cdc.gov; Elizabeth R Unger - eru0@cdc.gov; Suzanne D Vernon* - sdv2@cdc.gov
* Corresponding author

CFS is defined by a post-exertional fatigue that does not subside 24 hours following physical stress. In contrast, exercise in healthy, untrained people induces changes in cellular homeostasis in 1 to 4 hours and a return to basal levels within 24 hours, as measured in muscle [15].

Analysis of peripheral blood gene expression in the healthy control subjects confirmed this observation since the majority of gene expression levels were the same before and 24 hours following exercise challenge. This implied that expression either returned to basal levels or was unchanged as a result of the exercise challenge.

And indeed, many of the 21 exercise-induced, differentially expressed genes in control subjects were characterized by GOs that reflect a diverse set of molecular functions necessary for cell function and viability. (These ontologies overlapped with those identified in the GO comparison analysis given in Figure 2a).

Figure 1 clearly illustrates the reciprocal pattern of gene expression in the 21 genes formost of the control subjects. In contrast, 11 of the genes were unchanged in CFS subjects before and after exercise; with 5 being classified in a transport-related ontology.

Because this difference in gene expression is so dramatic, it implicates a fundamental perturbation in the biochemical activity of lymphocyte and monocyte peripheral blood fractions from CFS subjects compared with control subjects that does not affect classical immunologic markers (i.e, CD45) that have been shown to be unaffected in CFS patients [16,17]. Rather, low expression of these genes may have subtle effects on immune function. Read more>>

So at least in 2004 the CDC knew that ME/CFS is a physical disease, which also means they have known for a long time that all the Reeves nonsense about personality disorders is lying big time. Very sad this denial medicine. Time that one of these denial honchos gets ME themself.

See also: Metabolic dysfunction causes Post-Exertional malaise in ME/CFS or When CBT fanatico's get ME they run away from silly CBT as fast as possible !!