A new article, which Dr Charles Shepherd, MEA Hon. Medical Adviser was interviewed for, was published in the Daily Mail online and print. The article covers some recently published research into possibly shared biological mechanisms of ME/CFS and several other diseases, which we have previously covered on our blog.
PLEASE NOTE: In the interview, Dr Shepherd does not refer to CFS when talking to journalists and always refers to ME/CFS or ME. He was not given the opportunity to check the copy here before it was published.
Extracts from Daily Mail Online: The cause of your chronic and severe fatigue: Scientists studied the make-up of people with the illness… and now think they've found the genetic traits to blame
“Charles Shepherd is a medical doctor and honorary medical adviser to the UK charity, the ME Association. The association's official response is that: ‘More research is required. The conclusions that Professor Pshezhetskiy and his colleagues are making here are still quite speculative and unproven.'
Dr Shepherd told Good Health: ‘Another problem is that, having identified these as areas with underlying pathology, how do we fix them? How do we repair dysfunctional immune systems and improve cells' energy production? Science doesn't know at the moment.
‘Until we fully understand the mechanisms underlying [ME/]CFS, we will just be tackling symptoms.
‘But it is helpful that there is growing recognition that chronic fatigue syndromes[ME/CFS] are real.'
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
