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Health

Study may explain chronic fatigue

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 21, 2006

Chronic fatigue syndrome appears to result from something in people's genetic makeup that reduces their ability to deal with physical and psychological stress, researchers reported Thursday.

The research is being called some of the first credible evidence that genetics, when combined with stress, can bring on chronic fatigue syndrome - a condition so hard to diagnose and so poorly understood that some question whether it is a real ailment.

Researchers said the findings could help lead to better means of diagnosing and treating chronic fatigue syndrome and predicting those who are likely to develop the disorder, which is characterized by extreme, persistent exhaustion.

"The results are groundbreaking," said Dr. William Reeves of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reeves said the study demonstrates that people with the syndrome are unable to deal with everyday challenges. The CDC estimates more than 1-million Americans have the condition, with women suffering at four times the rate among men.

The research is published in this month's issue of Pharmacogenomics, a scientific journal.

The centerpiece is a study of 227 people with chronic fatigue syndrome in Wichita, Kan. Over two days, doctors performed psychiatric evaluations, assessed their physical limitations, looked at their medications and tested their blood and urine for chemical and biological abnormalities.

Among their findings: Chronic fatigue patients tested with high levels of allostatic load, a stress measure of hormone secretions, blood pressure and other signs of wear and tear on the body. They were about twice as likely to have a high allostatic load index as people who did not have the syndrome.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a complex illness characterized by at least six months of severe fatigue that is not helped by rest. Patients also report such symptoms as muscle pain and impaired memory.

The cause has never been identified, and there are no specific tests for it. It was first identified in the 1980s, but many people - including some health professionals - have greeted CFS patients with skepticism, regarding it as the complaint of "a bunch of hysterical upper-class white women," said Reeves, who heads the CDC's CFS research program.

WASHINGTON - The Food and Drug Administration declared Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" support the medical use of smoked marijuana. The statement, which contradicts a 1999 review by top government scientists, inserts the health agency into yet another political fight.

Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said the statement resulted from a combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded that "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment." She said that the FDA was issuing the statement because of numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would likely do nothing to enforce it.

"Any enforcement based on this finding would need to be by DEA, since this falls outside of FDA's regulatory authority," she said.

Eleven states have legalized medicinal uses of marijuana, but the Drug Enforcement Administration and the nation's drug czar, John Walters, have opposed those efforts.

The FDA statement contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific evaluative agency. That review found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting."

[Last modified April 21, 2006, 01:43:05]