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Spring 2003 

Banbury Meeting Raises CFIDS Profile
By Kim Kenney

CFIDS received important exposure to the scientific community in February when 32 researchers assembled for a three-day meeting to discuss and debate mechanisms of medically unexplained fatigue. Held at the prestigious Banbury Center of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on New York’s Long Island, the meeting kicked off the 25th year of small sessions designed to explore emerging scientific issues that carry social, health and policy implications.

CFIDS was the focus of several presentations; experts from other fields provided context and insight into how fatigue in other conditions is being investigated using new technologies and animal models. Studies of immune defects, neuroendocrine abnormalities, irregular sleep patterns, sex differences, genomics, proteomics and definitional issues spurred lively discussion.

Co-sponsored by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and The CFIDS Association of America, the session will help shape the direction and design of CFIDS studies at CDC and will inform the Association’s research grant-making program.

One key issue raised by several participants is the urgent need for a more sophisticated means of classifying CFIDS patients that would help to sort out differences possibly due to type of onset, length of illness, degree of functional impairment, concurrent diagnoses (such as sleep disorders, fibromyalgia and depression), age, sex and symptom presentation. CFIDS researchers left the meeting with new considerations for ongoing and planned studies; those from other fields acknowledged a greater appreciation for the complexity of CFIDS and some expressed interest in launching or collaborating on new CFIDS-related projects.

The meeting provided an excellent opportunity to raise the visibility of CFIDS in the broader scientific community and to draw attention to the great intellectual challenges its study poses. It was an excellent complement to the Association’s symposia series (2000-2001) and will hopefully strengthen the CFIDS research effort, an outcome desired by both CDC and The CFIDS Association.

Kim Kenney is president & CEO of The CFIDS Association of America.