According to The Guardian, the revelation came in a recent study on Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) conducted by academics in the United Kingdom. A debilitating long-term condition, CFS causes individuals to experience exhaustion that is not helped by rest. Also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), it causes pain, mental fogginess and memory and sleep troubles.
Studies have suggested the involvement of the immune system with viral infections as one of the triggers.
“The evidence is largely inconclusive – there are studies which have shown elevated levels of the inflammatory markers, but such abnormalities are quite inconsistent across studies,” said Alice Russell, first author of the research from King’s College London.
In the Journal of Psychoneuroendocrinology, the academics described their study design. They recruited 55 patients with a chronic hepatitis C infection, all of whom were given a six to twelve month course of injections of interferon alpha, a natural protein found in the body that triggers an immune response by white blood cells, a treatment which had previously been correlated with the side effect of fatigue in some patients.
The treatment, while resulting in recovery for most patients, also resulted in an increase in fatigue during treatment.
Six months after the treatment, more than one-third of participants remained more fatigued than before. These patients had only a slightly higher level of inflammatory protein, IL10, before the treatment began but after four weeks of treatment their levels of IL10 were twice as high. Six months after the injections stopped, there were no differences in IL10 between those with and without persistent fatigue.
Michael Sharpe, professor of psychological medicine at the University of Oxford, said the study added another piece to the puzzle about what might kick off CFS. “It does seem that something to do with the immune system may be a triggering event, [but] it doesn’t actually tell us why, when that trigger seems to have gone away, the person stays fatigued,” he said.
Sharpe remarked that the study did not provide insight into treating established cases of CFS. However, he added that if the condition is indeed triggered by an excessive immune response, and if they could find a way to reduce that immune response, they might be able to stop incident cases.
The article originally appeared on The Guardian.
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