Minireview for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and its medical attention recently, by Chang-Gue Son in J Korean Med. 2019;40(4):84-90 [http://dx.doi.org/10.13048/jkm.19043]

Review abstract:

Objectives: Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a debilitating illness impairing seriously quality of life, while CFS would be an optimized target disorder of Korean medicine. This study aims to present the recent information especially in aspect of medical policy and new diagnosis criteria for CFS.

Methods: The literature survey was conducted using the terms of “chronic fatigue syndrome”, “myalgic encephalomyelitis” and “fibromyalgia” in PubMed database and Google database in its entirety from January 2011 to February 2019. The in-depth review was made focusing on the changes in policy and medical perspective for CFS.

Results: Recently large medical attentions and researches for CFS have been existed worldwide. By supporting of USA government, IOM made a report which leaded to a turning point in clinical practices and research in 2015. This report recommended a new name of CFS to systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID), and new diagnostic criteria focusing on post-exertional malaise, unrefreshing sleep, cognitive impairment and orthostatic intolerance. The medical perspective also was changed into “a serious, chronic, complex, systemic disease” from a psychological-like disorder, and then UAS and EU governments sharply increased the research grants.

Conclusions: This study provided practitioners in Korean medicine (KM) a core information about the recent changes in CFS-related perspectives. This review would be helpful for KM-derived researches or therapeutics development for CFS.