Solving the ME/CFS criteria and name conundrum: The aftermath of IOM, by Leonard A Jason, Madeline Johnson in Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior, 28 Apr 2020
Article abstract:
In 2015, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) proposed a new name and set of clinical criteria for what had previously been referred to as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). This committee recommended the adoption of the term systemic exertion intolerance disease (SEID) and clinical criteria that required specific symptoms such as post-exertional malaise and unrefreshing sleep.
This article reviews efforts to evaluate the revised criteria as well as reactions to the new criteria and name. Since these recommendations have been made, the proposed name change has not been widely adopted by the scientific or patient community.
Even though the IOM’s proposed criteria were intended to be a clinical rather than a research case definition, over the past few years, an increasing number of studies have employed these criteria for research purposes. One unwitting consequence of the IOM criteria, which excludes few other illnesses, is the broadening of the number of individuals who are diagnosed and included in research studies.
There is still a need to implement the IOM’s recommendation to form a multidisciplinary committee to review research and policy changes following the release of the new criteria.
We conclude by presenting a possible roadmap for overcoming barriers in order to make progress on developing a consensus for a name and criteria.
The exercise programme was of five-weeks duration, with two self-paced aquatic sessions per week. Eleven female participants (mean age 54.8 ± 12.4 yr) reported the onset and changes (24–48 h) in post-exercise fatigue, pain and other symptoms after each session, and completed a post-intervention interview comprising nine open-ended questions, with additional discussions. The reported symptoms and interview responses were entered into a spreadsheet, grouped and coded to identify the themes and subthemes.
Seventy-two patients were examined at rest, during an incremental cycling exercise and during a 10-min post-exercise recovery period. All patients had at least four criteria leading to a diagnosis of ME/CFS. To explore muscle membrane excitability, 
The fecal microbiota of CFS/ME patients showed a significant reduction of 
Our study aimed to explore 
To evaluate the quality of the existing studies and summarize evidence of important outcomes of meta-analyses/systematic reviews (MAs/SRs) of CFS.
