The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) release a new Clinical Knowledge Summary on ME/CFS.
Clinical Knowledge Summaries provide primary care practitioners with a readily accessible and brief summary of the current evidence base on a condition along with practical advice on diagnosis and management.
The new CKS on ME/CFS (May 2025) is based on information and recommendations in 2021 NICE guideline on ME/CFS.
This CKS also provides supplementary information and guidance on some of the subjects in the basic summary.
MEA Comment
As a former committee member of the NICE guideline, I am aware that NICE has been working on a new CKS for ME/CFS for some time and am pleased to see that along with the basic summary there is detailed information and guidance on almost all of the key aspects of diagnosis and management that are relevant to primary care.
I fully appreciate that some of these recommendations, such as regular reviews in primary care, are not going to be easy to achieve. But the committee took the view that it was far better to make these recommendations than to do nothing at all.
Dr Charles Shepherd,
Trustee and Hon. Medical Adviser to the ME Association,
Member of the 2018-2021 NICE guideline on ME/CFS committee,
Member of the 2002 Chief Medical Officer's Working Group on ME/CFS
