Do you have other relatives with M.E.?

[edmeshscot]

According to research, there is evidence that M.E. may run in families - see biomedcentral.com/1471-2377....

Does anyone have personal experience of this? I know of one person whose mother and sister also have M.E. The real question is whether this is down to genes or environment - or a combination of both.

[Hedwig121]

My brother has been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. We have a cousin with MS which is believed to overlap with CFS.

[ukmsmi4]

Hi

Sorry if this reply is a bit late but I'm relatively new to this site.

I have three sisters. One of which has had ME for around 30 years, another is bipolar and diabetic with severe arthritis but also had a relatively brief spell of ME around 8 or 10 years ago. Our mother has never been diagnosed as having ME but as she got older has had more and more problems with severe fatigue and various infections.

I myself have been diagnosed since Dec 2011, off work since Mar 2011 after a big breakdown at work. But both my GP and myself reckon it is likely I have been getting more and more ill for quite a lot longer, just not diagnosed. Looking back I had a severe bout of bed ridden flu around early 1990s and things have been going downhill ever since. Been made redundant 5 times in 30 years, one of which was in the middle of my father being diagnosed with cancer and dying after 11 months (around 1996). Then had a spell of around three years where I had two lots of B12 anaemia and two lots of iron deficiency anaemia and shingles, plus many colds and viral infections.

Over the years I have had more and more problems with loss of voice, minor viral infections like colds, flu, water infections, throat infections, ear infections, an infection in the gut (which first started when I had the bad flu) and just general flu like symptoms etc and they get harder and harder to shake off. I have also developed post nasal drip, acid reflux and bruxism which don't help. Looking back the periods when I seemed to get markedly more generally ill, all coincided with either a severe illness, a bout of many minor illnesses, a period of extreme stress or a mixture of any.

Hope that helps.

Margaret.

[heatherthornton578]

I am the only one in my family who suffers with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome so this is a new experience for everyone in my family to cope with. My mum suffers with rheumatoid arthritis and suffers with fatigue aswell so we are both understanding of what each other are going through with that.