A preliminary study of more than 15,500 people has revealed possible genetic clues to a common but overlooked condition called myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.
Millions of people are thought to have ME/CFS worldwide, and though it is debilitating, it is not well understood and has long been dismissed as psychological rather than a physical condition.
In the new work, researchers uncovered eight genomic regions associated with ME/CFS, including some that overlap with or are near genes involved in immune function.
While the results still require peer review, they provide “validation of ME/CFS as a biomedical condition and an important corrective to psychologizing ‘all in the mind’ perspectives on the disease,” a researcher told Science.