The NIH released their findings today re: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome  It appears to be a step in the right direction of helping those who suffer the debilitating, physiological symptoms of CFS.  Eliminating much of the unnecessary degradation of being deemed hypochondriac kooks by uneducated physicians, the NIH Report establishes,

“Although psychological repercussions (e.g., depression) may accompany ME/CFS, it is not a primary psychological disease in etiology.”

To quote from the NIH Report:

“Both society and the medical profession have contributed to ME/CFS patients feeling disrespected and rejected. They are often treated with skepticism, uncertainty, and apprehension and labeled as deconditioned or having a primary psychological disorder. ME/CFS patients often make extraordinary efforts at extreme personal and physical costs to find a physician who will correctly diagnose and treat their symptoms while others are treated inappropriately causing additional harm. Overall, the debilitating effects of ME/CFS can result in financial instability due to the consequences of the illness (e.g., the loss of employment, home)”….economic burden estimated to be between $2 billion and $7 billion in the United States. ME/CFS results in major disability for a large proportion of the people affected.”

Do you think that maybe just maybe exposure to biocontaminants in water damaged buildings could be a cause of the CFS symptoms? They sure sound similar to many of the symptoms people report after being exposed in moldy buildings.  A growing number of researchers and physicians are of the opinion that exposure to biocontaminants, particularly toxins, is a cause of CFS. To determine if they are right, wouldn’t U.S. physicians being directed by the CDC to question their CFS patients about their past environmental exposures, help to establish or rule out the connection?  If the connection is made as a matter of public health policy, many illnesses would be prevented and lives would be saved.  It is well understood within the mold issue that removal from exposure to causative agents helps to curtail the symptoms from becoming long-term and debilitating.  Early detection seems to be the key along with physician awareness/education.

Medscape also blogged about the NIH and Institute of Medicine (IOM) findings on the subject of CFS.   (BTW & FYI, IOM is now NAM)

In the fourth paper, an editorial, Anthony L. Komaroff, MD, from Harvard University and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, notes that these new documents, along with the recent Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on ME/CFS, combine information from thousands of articles that demonstrate the biological underpinning of the illness.Indeed, the position paper cites “strong evidence” that “immunologic and inflammatory pathologic conditions, neurotransmitter signaling disruption, microbiome perturbation, and metabolic or mitochondrial abnormalities” are “potentially important for the definition and treatment of ME/CFS.”Taken together, Dr Komaroff says, the NIH and IOM reports “should put the question of whether ME/CFS is a ‘real’ illness to rest. When skeptical physicians, many of whom are unaware of this literature, tell patients with ME/CFS that ‘there is nothing wrong,’ they not only commit a diagnostic error: They also compound the patients’ suffering.”…

The Annals papers are the final product on ME/CFS from the NIH’s “Pathways to Prevention” (P2P) program, designed “to host workshops that identify research gaps in a selected scientific area, identify methodological and scientific weaknesses in that scientific area, suggest research needs, and move the field forward through an unbiased, evidence-based assessment of a complex public health issue.”…I believe the NIH will use this document to think about what needs to be done in the field.”

Now that the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine’s “Adverse Human Health Effects from Exposure to Mold in an Indoor Environment” is finally removed from U.S. public health policy; there is no bogus science that is standing in the way of properly educating U.S. physicians that moldy buildings can cause debilitating, neurological damage.

Training the doctors to ask their patients questions about the patients’ environmental exposures, seems a logical place to start when gaining greater physician understanding how to recognize, diagnose and treat CFS and all forms of illness caused by water damaged buildings.