Finally, a doctor in the US has tabled a report on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS, a debilitating disease that at least a million Americans are suffering from today. CFS is an infectious disease that costs the United States $9 billion annually to treat.

Dr. John Chia, a private practitioner in Torrance, California, who specializes in treating infectious diseases, conducted the study on the probable cause of CFS and published it in the online edition of the September 13 issue of the Journal of Clinical Pathology.

Dr. Chia first became with involved with CFS when ten years ago, his then 14 year old son Andrew Chia was diagnosed with it. In his study, Dr. Chia has been able to establish links between CFS and enteroviruses.

Enteroviruses are a class of viruses that cause extreme respiratory and gastrointestinal infections in patients. They infect the gastrointestinal tract, usually the bowel. There are over 70 different kinds of enteroviruses, and they affect the CNS, heart, and the muscular system.

CFS usually affects patients in the age group of 40 to 60 years, and women more than men. It is characterized by an inability to sleep well and also concentrate, and fatigue. The patient may feel fatigued for no particular reason. A patient suffering from a severe form of CFS can finally come down with multiple sclerosis.

CFS was first diagnosed some three decades back, and ever since, doctors have not been able to pin down any specific cause for it. Some researchers and physicians have laid responsibility at the doors of different viruses, such as the Epstein-Barr virus and pavovirus.

However, there was no concrete proof these viruses caused the disease, as there was no proof of the virus being present in the body itself and even if present, of causing any significant damage to any organ.

In his study, Dr. Chia studied over 3,000 blood samples from 165 patients diagnosed with CFS. He also had a control group of 34 people without CFS. After examining the multiple samples from each patient, Dr. Chia was able to determine existence of chronic infection in 82 percent of the CFS subjects and 20 percent of the non CFS subjects.

The infections were not always in the recent past. Most cases showed the primary infection had occurred as far back as 20 years ago. Dr. Chia says though other infections can also possibly trigger CFS, 50 percent of the time the likely cause was enteroviruses.

Commenting on Dr. Chia’s success, Dr. Nancy Klimas, director of the Gulf War Illness Center at the VA Medical Center and professor of medicine at the Miller School of Medicine, University of Miami, said Chia’s success lay in the fact he was studying the gastrointestinal tract, an area others had failed to look at.

Dr. Nancy said other doctors had ignored the gastrointestinal tract and concentrated on tracing the enteroviruses or whatever other class of viruses they suspected to be the cause of CFS in the bloodstream. She said this was the critical difference in approach that led to such drastic differences in results.

Chia started looking for enteroviruses at the gastrointestinal tract after there were reports published by European researchers of the presence of enteroviruses in the muscle, brain, and heart of a person afflicted by CFS.

Dr. Chia said the enterovirus entered a cell, but did not destroy it, flourishing inside it instead. The cell, on its part, afforded the enterovirus protection from attacks the patient’s immune system launched to destroy it. The continuous fight between the immune system attempting to wipe out the virus and the cell protecting it caused the pain and fatigue.

Dr. Chia was understandably elated with the results of his study. He said at least now doctors have something on which to base the development of effective medication specifically for CFS. He said his study makes it possible for doctors to study the viruses and figure out treatment modes to destroy them.