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Fall 2003 

Research News
The latest information on research, treatment and diagnosis of CFIDS and related disorders

Sinusitis, CFIDS linked
A Georgetown University professor has discovered a possible link between CFIDS and common sinusitis, two conditions that have never before been associated with each other.

In the August 11 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, Alexander C. Chester, MD, outlines a study he conducted with 297 patients in his general internal medicine practice. Sixty-five patients (22 per-cent) had unexplained chronic fatigue, while 11 percent

presented with unexplained chronic pain and nine percent presented with both conditions.

These ratios are not uncommon in general practice. But Dr. Chester also found that sinus symptoms were nine times more likely to occur in patients with unexplained fatigue and six times more likely in patients with unexplained chronic pain. The association with unexplained fatigue and sinusitis also was stronger than the association between sinusitis and other types of fatigue that could be explained by physical or mental conditions.

Of the 65 patients with unexplained chronic fatigue, 15 met the criteria for CFIDS. The majority of these patients had sinus symptoms. In addition, many of the CFIDS patients said they had a sudden onset of their condition, which often occurs in patients with sinusitis.

Dr. Chester says it’s too early to speculate on the reason the two conditions appear linked. But he says people with CFIDS should be checked for treatable sinus symptoms.

"While sinusitis will not be the answer for everyone who comes to an internist with unexplained fatigue or pain, this study does suggest that it should be considered as a part of a patient’s medical evaluation," Dr. Chester said.

Mycoplasma debate continues
CFIDS researchers have long disagreed about the role that infections by a group of bacteria called mycoplasmas may play in the development or symptomology of the illness. In fact, there’s debate about whether mycoplasma strains are even present in the tissue of people with CFIDS (PWCs) in unusual numbers.

Newly published research does little to quell the debate. Studies appearing in The Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the Scandina-vian journal APMIS, both authored by the same research team, found that the blood of more than half of PWCs tested were infected by one of four mycoplasma species.

But in a letter to the British Journal of Medical Microbiol-ogy, researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) present findings that indicate no unusual amount of myco-plasma infections in PWCs.

The researchers used blood collected during CDC’s large-scale CFIDS population study of the residents in Wichita, Kansas (see related Chronicle article, winter 2003). The CDC authors argue that their detection methods, which employ DNA sequencing, produces more reliable results than the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays used in previous studies.

NIH funds mono study
A five-year, $2.6 million study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will examine the relationship between mononucleosis and the development of CFIDS in about 400 Chicago-area teenagers.

No direct link has been made between mono and CFS. But many people with CFIDS report an attack of mono or another infectious condition prior to the onset of their illness.

Renee Taylor, PhD, of the University of Illinois-Chicago, says the study will give her and other researchers a rare chance to study CFIDS cases before they even start. "We can look at patients before they develop CFIDS, at the stage where they’ve just developed an infection, and then follow them over a two-year period to determine what characteristics of these mono patients…may lead to the development of post-infectious CFIDS," Taylor said.