Well, my faith in the CDC has dropped even lower than what it already was after reading this news. In 2005, the CDC created a paper describing an empirical approach to defining CFS. To read more about this, please visit the following link, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome A clinically empirical approach to its definition and study. According to ProHealth, the CDC’s empirical case definition “specifies criteria and instruments to diagnose chronic fatigue syndrome in order to bring more methodological rigor to the current CFS case definition.”
A case study was done using the new definition on 27 patients who had been diagnosed with ME/CFS and on 37 patients who have been diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder. The findings of this study revealed that 38% of those patients who had a diagnosis of Major Depressive Disorder were misclassified as having ME/CFS when using the new CDC definition.
Naturally, this is going to cause a lot of issues in the ME/CFS world and for patients in getting care because doctors and other medical professionals will take what the CDC says as gospel. This is what the CFIDS Association had to say about the new definition and these findings:
…the erroneous inclusion of people with primary psychiatric conditions in CFS samples will have detrimental consequences for the interpretation of epidemiologic, etiologic, and treatment efficacy findings for people with CFS.” With so much left to discover about the origins, treatment and prevention of CFS, conflict over the definition of the condition stalls progress.
To read more about the study, you can also visit the CFIDS Association link – Defining CFS: The Debate Goes On.
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