CFS and the public awareness campaign have been the subject of considerable media coverage since the campaign launched in 2006. The New York Times, Parade magazine, Woman's Day, WebMD, NBC Nightly News, American Medical News, O (the Oprah magazine), Minnesota Public Radio and all the major wire services are just a few of the outlets that have reported on CFS. The November 2006 press conference generated so much coverage, we’ve separated it by source.

Click on the buttons below to move to a listing of coverage with the most recent stories first. We have provided links to the original stories wherever possible.

• The New York Times reported that the authors of the “Lo/Alter study,” the sole study that seemed to support the relationship between XMRV and CFS, published in August 2010 by The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, retracted the paper based on the inability of other researchers to confirm their findings. (12/26/11)
• Science magazine retracted the original XMRV paper published in October 2009, citing issues with other labs’ ability to replicate the findings and “evidence of poor quality control.” (12/22/11)
• The UK’s BBC News produced a report on a British study that asserts that “Chronic fatigue syndrome ‘affects one in 100 pupils’.” (12/12/11)
• Columbia University professor of virology Dr. Vincent Racaniello’s popular virology blog hosted a comprehensive view of CFS, with a particular look at the role of the CDC in naming, researching, diagnosing and treating the illness, written by David Tuller of the “New York Times.” (11/23/11)
• Web site 7th Space Interactivedescribed a study in which British researchers reported on the “need for equity in health and social care expressed by adults living with CFS/ME;” they concluded that changes in attitudes and the inclusion of patients in healthy policy decision-making are needed to address these issues. (11/02/11)
• The November/December issue of The Saturday Evening Post includes a feature interview with the Association’s Scientific Director, Dr. Suzanne Vernon, titled “Fast-Track Research on Conquering Fatigue” in the “Medical Mailbox” section. This online version is not as extensive as the text that appeared in the print edition. (10/25/11)
• Norwegian TV’s TV2 was the first to cover the news about the results of the study showing that two infusions of cancer drug Rituximab may provide durable relief from CFS. Additional media coverage of this study was extensive, with more than 140 stories, including a complete package on TV2. (10/19/11)
• Website Everyday Health profiled CFS clinician and researcher Dr. Lucinda Bateman of Salt Lake City, Utah; she describes the work of the Fatigue Consultation Clinic, which she founded in 1999; who influenced her decision to enter medicine; and her “three top musts for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome management.” (10/14/11)
• Science magazine published a package of stories about XMRV and CFS, including the long-awaited results of the Blood XMRV Scientific Research Working Group (SWRG)’s Phase III study. (9/22/11)
• The Wall Street Journal chronicled the struggles of one young CFS patient in a front-page story titled “Wave of New Disabilities Swamps School Budgets.” (9/17/11)
• The Health blog of the Wall Street Journal announced the launch of the Chronic Fatigue Initiative, a venture-capital like effort that will pump more than $10 million into CFS research through 2014. (9/15/11)
• A study published in the British Medical Journal and conducted by researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK determined that “ME and CFS cause lost earnings of more than £102 million a year in the UK, as a result of the illnesses’ impact on employment and productivity.” (9/15/11)
• WebMD published “Stomach bug linked to IBS and chronic fatigue,” about the results of a Norwegian study published in the journal “Gut” that suggests a link between giardiasis, a parasitic infection, and CFS and irritable bowel syndrome. (9/12/11)
• NPR aired two segments on CFS during the “Morning Edition” show, “Cracking the Conundrum of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” by health policy correspondent Patti Neighmond; and “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Still a Medical Mystery” by correspondent Joanne Silberner. Both reports included interviews with patients and clinicians. (9/5/11)
• The September issue of Ladies Home Journal magazine published a story titled “What Ever Happened to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?” Writer Margery Rosen interviews patients, clinicians, researchers and Association president and CEO Kimberly McCleary to paint a comprehensive picture of CFS. (9/1/11)
• Britain’s The Observer, the Sunday edition of “The Guardian” newspaper, published a story titled “Chronic fatigue syndrome researchers face death threats from militants,” which described “a campaign of intimidation, attacks and death threats made against scientists by [CFS] activists.” (8/21/11)
• Britain’s BBC News released a packet of stories on several of its radio and television stations in which CFS researcher Professor Simon Wesseley detailed “a campaign of abuse” by patients against scientists researching the illness. (7/29/11)
• About.com’s Adrienne Dellwo published a “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Basics Series” that included information about the illness such as a description, symptoms, treatment options and pacing. (7/17/11)
• Scientific American ran a story titled “Donor Fatigue: Should Blood Banks Reject Chronic Fatigue Sufferers?” that described the troubles surrounding research into retrovirus XMRV and its link to CFS. (7/4/11)
• Columnist Carl Zimmer published an essay in the New York Times about the XMRV-CFS controversy. (6/23/11)
• The British Medical Journal published a package of stories about CFS and the research into its possible connection to the XMRV retrovirus: “Ending the stalemate over CFS/ME,” “Commentary: Living with CFS/ME,” “Commentary: Heading for a therapeutic stalemate” and “Dangers of research into chronic fatigue syndrome.” (6/22/11)
• Britain’s The Daily Mail reported on a commentary written by Dutch researchers who declared the end of the XMRV-CFS story published in “The Lancet.” (6/21/11)
• NBC’s “The Today Show” featured CFS during a “Today HEALTH” segment. Model Valerie Ramsey described how the illness came over her and how she’s healing with the help of holistic medicine. Dr. Nancy Snyderman educated viewers about the symptoms of and treatments for CFS. (6/20/11)
• The Mayo Clinic updated its CFS pages. (6/18/11)
• The Ms. Magazine blog profiles author and CFS activist Rivka Solomon. (6/2/11)
• Journal Science, publisher of the original paper linking retrovirus XMRV to CFS in 2009, included an “Editorial Expression of Concern” about that paper as an accompaniment to a report about one study that detailed the history of the creation of XMRV as a lab contaminant, and another study that found no evidence of the retrovirus in CFS patients previously identified as positive for it. (5/31/11)
• The Wall Street Journal’s Health blog reported on the negative XMRV study conducted by Ila Singh and her team at the University of Utah. (5/4/11)
• CNN’s political blog, “The 1600 Report,” noted that President Barack Obama pledged to urge the NIH to study CFS during a town hall meeting in Reno, Nevada. (4/21/11)
• Reuters reported on the results of the study conducted by researchers at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands and published in the journal “Pediatrics” about the affects of CFS on teens with regard to school attendance. (4/18/11)
• Amy Dockser Marcus of The Wall Street Journal continued her CFS coverage with a post on the paper’s Health blog about the debate between Whittemore Peterson Institute Research Director Dr. Judy Mikovits and noted retrovirologist Dr. John Coffin on the validity of XMRV research that took place at the NIH’s “State of the Knowledge” workshop. (4/8/11)
• Wall Street Journal writer Amy Dockser Marcus continues her coverage of the illness in a story titled, “Unlocking Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” a look at biological research into the causes of CFS. (3/22/11)
• Blog Pain.com wraps up a three-part series of posts on “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.” Links to the previous two posts are found on this page. (3/20/11)
• The BBC covered CFS in its radio program “The Woman’s Hour.” (3/16/11)
• CFS researcher and patient Dr. Leonard Jason published an essay titled “An Illness That's Hard To Live With—Or Define” in the Wall Street Journal discussing the history and definition of the illness. (3/5/11)
• US News and World Report publishes “Health Tip: Managing Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” a short feature that is picked up by other mainstream media. (2/24/11)
• Blogger Adrienne Dellwo writes on About.com’s Fibrolyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome pages about funding disparities in federal research for CFS. (2/9/11)
• New York Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope interviews CFS patient and author Laura Hillenbrand about her illness and its affects on her writing in “An Author Escapes From Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.” (2/4/11)
• Guideposts magazine publishes two stories with a theme of forgiveness and redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, author of “Unbroken” and CFS patient. (Unfortunately, the stories are not available on the magazine’s website.) (1/01/11)
• The January issue of Runner’s World magazine includes a package of stories about Louis Zamperini, runner, World War II hero and subject of CFS patient and author Laura Hillenbrand’s new book, “Unbroken.” Mention is made of her illness. (Unfortunately, the stories are not available on the magazine’s website.) (1/01/11)
• Shots, the health blog on the NPR website posts “Researchers Cast Doubt On Virus As Culprit In Chronic Fatigue Syndrome,” an item about four papers published in the journal Retrovirology that reported potential sources of contamination of studies of XMRV and other murine leukemia virus-related viruses. (12/20/10)
• An interview with CFS patient and author Laura Hillenbrand published in Sports Illustrated focuses exclusively on her illness in the context of her love of sports and her ability and desire to write about sports figures in the face of it. (12/15/10)
• The Washington Post’s The Checkup blog reports on a statement released by the American Red Cross that indefinitely defers CFS patients from donating blood “to reduce the risk of transmitting a virus [XMRV] that has been associated with the disease.” (12/03/10)
• The New Yorker magazine, which published CFS patient and author Laura Hillenbrand’s seminal essay “A Sudden Illness,” about her onset of and battle with CFS, publishes “The Exchange: Laura Hillenbrand,” an email interview in which she discusses the inspiration behind and information gained during the writing of her new book, “Unbroken.” (12/01/10)
• The December issue of Elle magazine includes “Blithe Spirit,” a profile of Laura Hillenbrand, CFS patient and author of “Unbroken,” a story about a World War II hero. (December 2010)
• The Washington Post paints a moving portrait of author Laura Hillenbrand’s life with CFS in a profile article titled “Laura Hillenbrand releases new book while fighting chronic fatigue syndrome.” (11/28/10)
• “Validation in a Virus?” asks Newsweek’s Claudia Kalb in a balanced article that outlines the XMRV controversy. (11/28/10)
• The Economist publishes “Born to live,” a review of CFS patient and author Laura Hillenbrand’s new book, “Unbroken.” (11/25/10)
• NPR Correspondent Jane Ciabattari reviews “Unbroken,” the new book by author and CFS patient Laura Hillenbrand, in The Los Angeles Times. She likens Hillenbrand’s resilience to that of her subject, Olympian and POW Louis Zamperini. (“Book review: ‘Unbroken'’ by Laura Hillenbrand) (11/24/10)
• People magazine’s Nov. 22 issue includes a review of “Unbroken” by CFS patient Laura Hillenbrand. The brief article includes the sidebar “Hillenbrand on Writing and Illness” with her comments. (11/22/10)
• The Science Daily website and other major outlets write about three studies published in the Journal of Infectious Disease, noting that “the evidence supports a possible link between XMRV and prostate cancer but not other links involving chronic fatigue syndrome, HIV infection, or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.” (11/15/10)
• “The Defiant Ones” profiles both Louis Zamperini, the subject of CFS patient Laura Hillenbrand’s new book “Unbroken” and the author herself. The Wall Street Journal article’s posting on the paper’s website includes an interesting online image gallery. (11/12/10)
• Newsweek magazine reviews “Unbroken,” the new book by “Seabiscuit” author and CFS patient Laura Hillenbrand. (11/11/10)
• USA Today profiles author and CFS patient Laura Hillenbrand on the occasion of the publishing of her second book, “Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.” (11/10/10)
• The November 8 issue of First For Women magazine includes an article titled “Why are you so tired?” Dr. Mehmet Oz features four conditions “… found to be common energy stealers, and the proven strategies that can help you defeat them.” CFS is one of the four conditions. The magazine’s content is not available online. (11/08/10)
• Real Simple magazine’s November issue includes a story titled, “Are You Tired All The Time?” that reviews common causes of fatigue and suggests ways to combat it. CFS and fibromyalgia are included as two of the more serious conditions that people suffering from fatigue should explore with their health care professionals. (11/01/10)
• BBC News reports that “ME patients face UK ban on donating blood” beginning November 1. While Britain’s NHS Blood and Transplant says the ban is a blood-safety precaution that aligns CFS with other illnesses, patient advocacy groups point to the possibility of XMRV/MLV being a blood-borne illness as the reason. (10/07/10)
• “Detection of MLV-related virus gene sequences in blood of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and healthy blood donors,” a study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by a team of researchers from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Harvard Medical School, links CFS to an XMRV-related but different group of polytropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (PMLV) sequences. (8/23/10) More information about this study can be found here.
• Newsweek includes CFS as one of “History's Mystery Illnesses” in a pictorial essay. (8/23/10)
• Retrovirology publishes “Absence of evidence of Xenotropic Murine Leukemia Virus-related virus infection in persons with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and healthy controls in the United States,” a report by CDC researchers on their attempts to find XMRV in the blood of CFS patients and healthy controls. (7/01/10)
• Dutch media wire service MMD Newswire publishes a press release titled “Original Press Release from the Netherlands: FDA and NIH confirm ‘XMRV findings’” that stated that “The FDA and the NIH have independently confirmed the XMRV findings as published in Science…” (6/22/10)
• “The AABB Makes it Official: CFS Patients Shouldn’t Give Blood” says a post on The Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog. The AABB, an association of facilities that collect most of the U.S. blood supply, recommends its members actively discourage CFS patients from donating blood until its relationship to XMRV has been established. (6/19/10)
• The Brisbane Times reports that the Australian blood service will follow Canada’s suit and review blood donor eligibility guidelines. Various media outlets also report that New Zealand health officials are doing the same. (“CFS ‘link’ prompts blood donation review”) (4/19/10)
• The spring issue of The Pain Practitioner, the magazine of the American Academy of Pain Management, includes an article titled “Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” written by Association President and CEO Kimberly McCleary and Scientific Director Dr. Suzanne Vernon. (04/07/10)
• Website HealthZone.ca publishes the news that Canda will become the first country in the world to ban CFS patients from donating blood out of concern for the as-yet-unknown affects of XMRV. (4/06/10)
• The Wall Street Journal reports that “Potential Risk to Blood Supply Probed,” noting that XMRV is “drawing the attention of public-health officials, who are investigating the potential threat to the nation’s blood supply.” (4/04/10)
• The results of a study published in open-access journal PLoSOne found that raltegravir, an antiretroviral medication, was one of three such drugs that inhibited the growth of XMRV in cells in vitro. (“Raltegravir Is a Potent Inhibitor of XMRV, a Virus Implicated in Prostate Cancer and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”) (4/01/10)
• Prevention magazine includes CFS in a list of possible causes for fatigue. (“Tired All the Time?”) (3/24/10)
• “The Race Is On,” a long article about CFS, XMRV and drug companies’ new interest in CFS appears in the March issue of Pharmaceutical Executive, a magazine that serves the pharmaceutical and biotech industry. (3/24/10)
• The March/April 2010 issue of Lutheran Woman Today magazine includes an article about CFS, featuring interviews with Association President and CEO Kimberly McCleary and patient Wilhelmina Jenkins. It is not available online. (3/15/10)
• XMRV was not detected in a third follow-up study reported in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) titled, “Prevalence of xenotropic murine leukaemia virus-related virus in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome in the Netherlands: retrospective analysis of samples from an established cohort.” (2/25/10)
• A second XMRV replication study, also conducted in the UK, failed to detect the retrovirus in the blood of CFS patients, according to results published in the medical journal Retrovirology. (2/15/10)
• BBC News was the first outlet to disclose that “Research finds no proof that a virus is the cause of ME,” a report on a study published in online journal PlosOne and conducted by researchers at London’s Imperial College in which they could find no evidence of XMRV in blood samples from 186 CFS patients. This new study promises to generate nearly as much coverage as the initial study published in Science in October 2009. Additional information about the first XMRV replication study can be found here. (1/06/10)
• Woman’s Day publishes “Understanding Chronic Fatigue,” a short but thorough article that includes information about XMRV. (12/03/09)
• Women’s health expert Dr. Donnica Moore was a guest on “The Dr. Oz Show” to discuss CFS and XMRV. The show is posted in two parts on YouTube. (12/03/09) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLdmK9ZHqWM and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXZmCtF6bhM
• A story published on the Science Express website of Science magazine outlines the “Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome” by researchers at the Whittemore-Peterson Institute, the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic. More about the study, a link to the press release and the article abstract can be found here. (10/8/09)
• ABC’s “Good Morning America Health” featured CFS in a segment with guest women’s health expert Dr. Donnica Moore. (9/24/09)
• Columnist Barbara Ficarra discusses CFS and quotes from both the CDC and the Association in her blog on The Huffington Post. (“Extremely Tired and Completely Worn Out? What It Could Mean Plus Questions to Ask Your Doctor”) (9/14/09)
• Reuters reported on a study published in the July 2009 issue of Pediatrics and conducted by Dr. Ben Z. Katz of Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and colleagues that links infectious mononucleosis to CFS in teen patients. (7/16/09)