Couldn’t have said it better. And yes, science journalism often is basically repeating and dumbing down what a study says, but in science, and especially in medicine, a lot of studies tend to be wrong, make false assumptions, or overstate their findings, while journalists tend to take them for their word. There’s a reason you hear of a new cancer treatment in the news every other week but few actually make it past FDA approval.

wow, thank you so much for the detailed answer, I'm fascinated chronic fatigue syndrome turned out to be a neuroimmune disorder.

is ME genetic or do you just get unlucky as far as we know so far?

Hey I’m a researcher who works on ME (in the past called CFS).

ME/CFS is currently classified as a disease/biological illness according to the CDC.

ME is a disease state in itself. We don’t know much about it, but it can’t be explained by other diagnoses, as the defining factor, neuro-immune abnormalities including immune activation showing up post exertion is unique to it. You’re completely right that we don’t yet have a reliable biomarker. We have a test that differentiates from healthy controls, but it was discontinued for ethical reasons because conducting the test leads to a sometimes permanent worsening of the illness.

In the past it’s been mixed up and jumbled a lot, but the picture is getting clearer.

There have been a few case reports of degenerative forms of the illness. But in general it takes a more classical relapsing remitting pattern. Although even in less bad stages some patients are severely functionally disabled, even bedridden and tubefed. It has a really wide range of severities with the least severely affected able to work part time and walk and travel, while the most severe might not even be able to communicate.

this is the extent of what I knew about CFS, I never heard of ME, I thought CFE was still a collection of symptoms that didn't even indicate a single underlying syndrome.

I like the progress, clearly seeing brain stem inflammation sounds like comic book talk from 20 years ago.

they're going to see inflamed dendrites next.

oh but isn't clogged dendrites how they identify multiple sclerosis already?

clearly I have to read more about this. catch up a bit.

thanks for the explanation.

some of us syndromically

Much the same like we all get depressed - a normal & necessary mechanism that if it lasts for too long no longer works & causes damage.