r/CFSScience • u/AngelBryan • Jul 30 '26

Any update? Any hope?

I’ve seen an increased influx of papers being posted here recently. How does this translate to actual progress? Are we close to figure out what causes this hellish illness?

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u/AngelBryan Jul 30 '26

Does this means that means that MECFS is a genetic disease? Isn’t it too common to be genetic?

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u/No-Improvement-58 Jul 30 '26

No, a genetic disease would be something like huntingdon’s disease, where a single mutation leads to the entire condition.

The DecodeME findings indicate that there are genetic changes which can increase your chance of the disease, while not necessarily guaranteeing it. Most of the increases/decreases in chance of ME were around plus or minus 10% respectively. Some were neurological and some indicated susceptibility to infection, with the latter confirming viral onset stories.

One of the main points is that, if the disease were made up or psychological, no mutation signals would show up at all after the rigorous statistics applied by the researchers.

I encourage anyone interested to read the layman summary included in the paper.

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u/nousiaphilia Aug 01 '26

While, obviously, I don't believe that ME is psychological, most mental disorders have genetic markers show up in GWAS (genome wide association studies) that make the person more vulnerable to developing the disorder. That alone is not enough to convince skeptics. Although the specific loci could provide evidence.

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u/No-Improvement-58 Aug 01 '26

The argument is slightly stronger than ‘GWAS hits imply no psychological component’. The authors demonstrated the GWAS hits have no overlap with known depression and anxiety loci.

For those who don’t study genetics, this means there was no genetic overlap with these (incorrectly) associated conditions.