How can you explain epidemic ME

[MEguy]

How do people here explain epidemic forms of ME where lots of people get ill with ME at the same time. There have been lots of epidemics. I read a book by Dr Byron Hyde called Understanding ME, in which he says ME is a form of non paralytic polio. So maybe that is one explanation for epidemic ME idk. any ideas?

[Iesgobdafydd]

I've read something similar, and it seems plausible to me but I don't have a lot of background knowledge to judge it by. What I read suggested ME has actually been known for a long time, just named differently by doctors and is one possible reaction to particular types of virus (which I think included the polio one), and was mentioned in the past in connection with epidemics.

At the least, since ME is often known to have been triggered by a virus, it seems only common sense that in epidemics it would be triggered more often, provided the type of virus causing the epidemic is a type that can cause ME.

[bennevisplace]

"The first recorded outbreak of epidemic myalgic encephalomyelitis was in 1934 in Los Angeles and was thought to be an outbreak of atypical polio. After the outbreak in Akureyri, Iceland in 1946, the disease came to be called Akureyri Disease or Icelandic disease through much of the 1940s and 1950s. It was named myalgic encephalomyelitis after London's Royal Free Hospital outbreak in 1955". Extract from me-pedia.org/wiki/Epidemic_...

The above link strongly suggests that epidemic ME is real. Indeed, the term ME has its origins in viral outbreaks in which groups of patients in institutions suffered follow-on symptoms we might recognise today as similar to ME, i.e. "a symptom complex involving muscle weakness, muscle fatigability and central nervous system involvement in a significant proportion of cases".

The article goes on to say "Although many patients improved over time, in follow-up studies, a large percentage were still ill months to years later. Many case studies note long periods of convalescence with relapses following exertion" and (predictably) "In 1970, a paper by Colin P. McEvedy and AW Beard claimed that the 1955 Royal Free Hospital outbreak was actually mass hysteria despite never examining patients".

[MEguy in reply to bennevisplace]

yeh Hyde says that epidemic ME is always caused by an enterovirus. But someone said that since the 1950s, we have all been vaccinated against polio and yet people still get ME even in areas where polio has been eradicated.

[bennevisplace]

He may be referring to this:

Persistent non-cytolytic enterovirus

Enteroviruses are capable of producing acute infections that are rapidly cleared by the adaptive immune response.[17][18] However, genomic mutations which enterovirus B serotypes (such as coxsackievirus B and echovirus) may acquire in the host during the acute phase of the infection can transform these viruses into the non-cytolytic form (also known as non-cytopathic or defective enterovirus), a form which is capable of causing persistent low-level infections in human tissues that can last indefinitely.[19]

This persistent non-cytolytic enterovirus is a mutated quasispecies,[17] and such non-cytolytic infections have been found in the pancreas in type 1 diabetes,[20][21] in chronic myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy,[22][17][23] in valvular heart disease,[24] in the muscles, intestines and brain in myalgic encephalomyelitis,[25][26] and in Sjögren's syndrome.[27] In these persistent infections, enteroviral RNA is present at low levels in the tissues (both as single-stranded viral RNA, and in the more immune resistant doubled-stranded RNA form). Some researchers believe this enteroviral RNA is just a remnant of the acute infection,[18] although other scientists believe these persistent intracellular viral RNA infections may have pathological effects, playing a causal role their associated diseases.[28]

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter...

Other medical associations have been drawn with ME as you'll know. Gut dysbiosis is an intruiging one, see healthunlocked.com/meandcfs...