CDC Studies Cortisol & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
If you have chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and you're female, you probably woke up this morning with a really low cortisol level. A study accepted for publication in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM) links low levels of the hormone to severe fatigue in female CFS patients - but not in male patients.
Cortisol is one of the weapons your body uses to fight stress, and in CFS, low levels may be what makes it hard to deal with not only psychological stress, but also physical stresses such as infection and exertion. Other research has shown differences in cortisol levels between men and women, including a recent study that found an unhappy marriage led to lower levels in women, but not in men. These differences could help explain why women are so much more susceptible to CFS.
What I find most exciting about this study isn't that it confirms differences in cortisol levels between those with and without CFS or between men and women. What really caught my attention was that most of the researchers are with the CDC. That's right, doctors with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are actively looking into biological indicators of CFS.
It was only in 2006 that the CDC acknowledged studies had provided credible evidence that CFS might have a biological basis, so to have these guys now working to find even more evidence seems to be a sign that the tides have turned. If the CDC is taking chronic fatigue syndrome more seriously, it could help convince more members of the medical community that it's a real medical condition and not an issue of psychology or whining. If you have any chronic doubters in your life, maybe they need to take a close look at this study and who's involved in it.
- Read more about this study.
- Learn about the causes of CFS.
- Find people who understand CFS and how to manage it in our forum.
Comments
That CDC researchers are looking at cortisol levels isn’t surprising if you understand bio-politics. It isn’t as great as it sounds. As psychiatrists have tried to expand their influence into biomodels of illness one of the areas they have concentrated on are hormones, specifically cortisols. There is a psychoimmunological theory that stress levels coorelate with disease. This theory is far from proven however which doesn’t stop ideological adherents from trying to prove it, nor should it. All avenues need to be explored without “blaming” patients. The problem comes when these lines of research are the only ones funded. For example CDC research Dr. William Reeves who is listed as a virologist has also been a professor of psychiatry with Emory University in Atlanta although neither he nor the CDC advertise this. Dr. Reeves has claimed that ME/CFS patients are more vulnerable to stress and thus more likely to develop this organic brain disease. However, he doesn’t tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In a 2006 press conference he told reporters that stress was related to divorce and other forms of psychological stress ignoring the biological evidence that microbes such as viruses also “stress” the body and in the case of ME/CFS may well cause the disease. It also makes a difference whether researchers say disease is exacerbated by stress or caused by stress. Because of the problems with research definitions, not even the CDC knows which is the actual case.
Does any of this mean that stress and metabolism play no role in ME/CFS? Not at all. It simply means that research without context is meaningless. Accurate research is dependent on which variables are controlled for and how patients are defined. Until these issues are adequately addressed CDC, which is a public health organization, research or clinical research by anyone else for that matter remains limited.
That CDC researchers are looking at cortisol levels isn’t surprising if you understand bio-politics. It isn’t as great as it sounds. As psychiatrists have tried to expand their influence into biomodels of illness one of the areas they have concentrated on are hormones, specifically cortisols. There is a psychoimmunological theory that stress levels coorelate with disease - in this case psychological stres. This theory is far from proven however which doesn’t stop ideological adherents from trying to prove it, nor should it. All avenues need to be explored without “blaming” patients. The problem comes when these lines of research are the only ones funded. For example, CDC research Dr. William Reeves who is listed as a virologist has also been a professor of psychiatry with Emory University in Atlanta although neither he nor the CDC advertise this. Dr. Reeves has claimed that ME/CFS patients are more vulnerable to stress and thus more likely to develop this organic brain disease. However, he doesn’t tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In a 2006 press conference he told reporters that stress was related to divorce and other forms of psychological stress ignoring the biological evidence that microbes such as viruses also “stress” the body and in the case of ME/CFS may well cause the disease. It also makes a difference whether researchers say disease is exacerbated by stress or caused by stress. Those are two very different things. Because of the problems with research definitions, not even the CDC knows which is the actual case.
Does any of this mean that stress and metabolism play no role in ME/CFS? Not at all. It simply means that research without context is meaningless. Accurate research is dependent on which variables are controlled for and how patients are defined. Until these issues are adequately addressed CDC, which is a public health organization, research or clinical research by anyone else for that matter remains limited.
Kate,
Thanks for the information! It’s interesting to look into the politics of health. You’re so right that every discovery needs to be put in the appropriate context. Hopefully, if enough people are keeping track of all these developments, we can eventually piece them together to see the whole picture.
Kate, thanks so much for letting us know about Reeves’ adjunct professorship. It all makes sense now-his useless psychiatric research, his research being published in psychiatric journals, and his involvement in research with Emory. Apparently, he got that position as a direct result of his CFS research at the CDC. Here’s an article by Craig Maupin about it:
http://www.cfidsreport.com/News/06-CDC_CFS_Reeves.htm
It also makes you wonder about the payoff he may be getting from big pharma, as the former director of the psychiatry department at Emory had to step down after an investigation for conflict of interest for receiving money from them:
http://wsbradio.com/localnews/2008/12/emory-psychiatry-head-quits.html
Reeves is not even looking at the disease that is CFS. It sounds like he is looking at people with PTSD or depression, and is then calling it CFS. The case definition that he is using does not even include the symptoms (including viruses) that people with true CFS have. Private institutes and universities are using the significantly more accurate Canadian case definition and are finding biological evidence of a disease in real CFS patients. Apparently for Reeves however, the big payoff is in palling around with big pharma. If he can convince enough people that CFS is a psychiatric disorder then it will be a potential goldmine for those companies, and for him as well.
This child abuse research study may paradoxically help support the viral explanation of chronic fatigue syndrome, rather than a psychological one!
Having had a respiratory and neurological virus myself, and having seen this virus slowly spread to all my family members, and some friends too, I have noticed how it has caused mental state changes in nearly everybody that caught it, to some degree. However, only one person (myself) actually got full chronic fatigue syndrome from this virus. Most people got off much more lightly, but nevertheless did display some permanent mental state changes.
So it is clear to me that such neurological viruses can cause subtle, subclinical mental state changes, as well as full CFS.
Most of the subclinical mental state changes I have observed in my family and friends have made people act a little strangely. In short: the virus causes subclinical but sub-optimal mental states.
Therefore, it is possible that as a virus slowly infects a whole family, some members will get CFS, but other members may experience these slightly abnormal mental states - and in very rare cases, it is these abnormal states that contributes to creating the abhorrent mind state that can go on to commit child abuse.
In other words, in etiological terms, it is not the experience of having been abused as a child that later causes CFS, but rather it is a neurological virus that, having spread around the family, caused CFS in some members, and also kicked off the brain changes that, in susceptible people, then led to the extreme behavior of child abuse.
Thus, read this way, rather than support the psychological causal theories of CFS, this data from Emory University on child abuse is more likely to support a viral etiology of CFS.
In general, more research should be done on people that have one or more neurological viruses in their systems, even if they are apparently without overt symptoms. These neurological viruses may well be connected to all sort of subtle abnormal and subnormal behaviors and mental states, not just CFS.
The connection between neurological pathogens and mental heath is very well established as regards to curable bugs like toxoplasma and syphilis, simply because mental state problems caused by these tend to resolve when the people are given the cure (antibiotics), thus proving the connection. Once effective antivirals are developed, the same will almost certainly be found true for CFS.
In summary: although people with full CFS might be the worst off in terms of mental state changes, these same neurological viruses that cause CFS (which are very commonly found in the general population) may be responsible for many more mental state aberrations other than just those of chronic fatigue syndrome.