Posted on 06/16/2006 8:22:50 AM PDT by aculeus
Chronic fatigue syndrome has been given as an official cause of death – apparently for the first time in the world.
On Tuesday, coroner Veronica Hamilton-Deeley of Brighton and Hove Coroners Court, UK, recorded the cause of death of a 32-year-old woman as acute aneuric renal failure (failure to produce urine) due to dehydration as a result of CFS. The deceased woman, Sophia Mirza, had suffered from CFS for six years.
CFS, which is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), has a variety of devastating symptoms ranging from extreme weakness, inability to concentrate and persistent headache. Sufferers can have the disease for years, but its cause remains controversial, with fiercely opposing views from psychiatrists on one side and biologically minded physicians on the other.
The coroner’s verdict is a breakthrough for those who argue that CFS is a physical condition, possibly with its roots in the immune system. Dominic O’Donovan, a neuropathologist at Oldchurch Hospital in Romford, UK, who gave evidence at the inquest, said that Sophia’s spinal cord showed inflammation caused by dorsal root ganglionitis - a clear physical manifestation of the disease.
Overactive immune response CFS specialist Jonathan Kerr of St George's, University of London, says he is not surprised that inflammation in the spinal cord has been found in someone with the disease, as it is known to be associated with it. He says that the immune system tends to be over-activated in people with CFS and this may underlie the inflammation of the neurological tissue.
“People have been reluctant to subscribe to the biological side because of the power of the psychiatric lobby,” says Kerr. “Doctors are sceptical about the existence of CFS and there is controversy about its underlying cause.”
Abhijit Chaudhuri, a consultant neurologist at the Essex Centre of Neurological Science who worked with O’Donovan on Sophia’s case, says the changes to her spinal cord may have resulted in symptoms of chronic fatigue.
“Sophia’s case sheds light on CFS because there were changes in her dorsal ganglia – the gatekeepers to sensation in the brain – and we know that fatigue depends on sensory perception,” he says. “What we need to understand is what happens that makes fatigue more persistent, without there being an obvious systemic disturbance.”
Rigorous inquest
The inquest was rigorous, Chaudhuri says, and considered all other potential causes of death consistent with the post-mortem results, such as sleep apnoea and drug use, and rejected them.
The verdict was welcomed by Sophia’s mother, Criona Wilson, who had to fight for recognition that her daughter was physically - rather than mentally - ill. Sophia was sectioned for two weeks under the Mental Health Act in 2003.
“I’m extremely pleased that CFS/ME was identified on the death certificate as one of the primary causes of Sophia’s death,” she says, “because this can be used to reinforce the need for biomedical research into the disease.”
Crocks are always waiting to be filled.
The symptom cannot become the disease unless we are willing to personalize illness.
I'm sort of sorry I posted before I read this far, but I thought you had left us.
To you and those whose posts echo yours it might be wise to consider that not every day can be a great day and that going to a doctor is not always the best first course.
It's really all Lyme Disease...
Prof, I love ya, but you just do not understand what this is about. My 15 year old daughter has suffered (and I do mean suffered) with WHATEVER you want to call it, since age 13. She got mono, went through puberty, and spent the following summer on the couch. She has never been the same since. Went from straight A's, captain of her Pom-pon squad, to literally limping through the past two years of school, unable to concentrate and nearly unable to get through the day.
No, but I will try to find out once he has his exams behind him. It just occurred to me earlier that I didn't know.
UK health care system takes these cases more seriously than we do. It is a pure miracle that he has been able to finish his courses but the laws will allow him some leeway about choices and times during which he does his internship so that when he is bright yellow with jaundice and not able to lift his head he will be able to have time to fight it off again.
I've always been a magnet for the patients who are allergic to "binders and excipients." Who hate doctors. But keep coming back.
Do you snore?
"Of course the MD thinks I'm a whack job for going to a naturopath & chiropractor...."
I got the same thing from them when I was ill several years ago. It's like you talk and they just ignore you.
If a doctor doesn't understand your condition:
a. It doesn't exist
b. You're crazy
Nope.
Yeah, she died of kidney failure due to dehydration...doesn't make sense.
Normal people don't die of dehydration unless it's
1) very hot and you don't drink enough water
2) you have vomiting or diarrhea or both
3) you are comatose/oversedated from pain medicine
Yeah. I agree lots of people have lyme disease. But I worked in the Midwest, so we didn't see a lot of lymes disease. However, we see it after Mononucleosis and also mycoplasm pneumonia. I see about two people a year who come in with terrible fatigue and have MOno...or sometimes Hepatitis C...and they usually don't give much history of being "sick" because they don't go to doctors for mild illnesses, but six or eight weeks later, they come in still feeling terrible, and their blood test is positive. And yes, I do check the blood test for Lyme but it's not a good test. I also check for Lupus if they get swollen joints or muscle pain...
The difference is that the neurotics come in and tell a dramatic story of their problems, and NOTHING you do can help. In fact, often they don't take the pills, or they take one and get "side effects" even though I usually start with a tiny dose that shouldn't bother anyone...They drive their families crazy. It goes on for years.
When they leave the room, you feel exhausted emotionally. (In psychiatry, this is called countertransference).
Every doc has lots of these, and boy, it makes us exhausted. And when people with real problems come in, sometimes we think they are nuts too, especially if we're too busy to get to the bottom of the weird symptoms
The REAL patients usually know when their symptoms started. Before they got sick,
Get her to help you plant a garden, start the seeds in the kitchen and measure every inch of growth until the plants mature and let nature work.
Doctor speak for "pill-poppers?"
Damn, if it ain't turtles, it's barnacles.
I have a lady doc; it came about after visiting my local emergency room one morning when I awoke with my left hand numb and figured it might be a good idea to go see if it meant anything.
It turned out that my blood pressure was elevated 180/120 which later after several tests were run including a brain scan settled down to around 155/110.
Three months later I found an internist (G.P.?) and have been seeing her since. She is about 80 pounds overweight and takes medicine for HBP and prescribed Toprol for me after I decided against an earlier med that had chronic cough listed a a side-effect.
I started on 25mg/day on 4/14/06 and have stayed there since; my last office visit measured 138/84 at 9:30 A.M. on 05/30/06 (about when my BP normally peaks at rest.)
She seems satisfied with that as I am a strong-dipper and the only side effect is a slowed pulse, 65-72 ave., a little less get-up-and-go which pretty much got up and went when I retired, a few vivid dreams and a chronic feeling of boredom.
I am a lifelong sporadic eater and still weigh within ten pounds of my full weight at maturity; when I was in my mid-years, I became a virtual hypochondriac, especially after I got full-coverage health insurance.
Now, even though I have group health coverage and Medicare Part A and Part B; I'm more inclined to monitor and make infrequent visits to my doctor.
These past several years of idleness and boredom, other than a Dale Earnhardt mind in a Walking Stick bug body, have allowed me to wonder if most chronically-ill people with no obvious pathologies aren't just as bored as I.
I occasionally fix lawnmowers for neighbors and have discovered that I can talk to machines, I can look at them and tell each incident of abuse or neglect or trauma and learn more about the person who owns it than anything said between that owner and me.
I also have three dogs and I only wish it were as easy to tell what makes them ill-at-ease at times, so, like everyone else, I tend to overfeed them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.