Hip~ Not enough is known about CFS/ME to suggest such a road map. The Stanford website gives some ideas. First rule out other problems:
http://chronicfatigue.stanford.edu/overview/diagnosis.html If the patient isn't ill with one of those problems, then consider infections:
http://chronicfatigue.stanford.edu/infections/
Nothing beyond that is known for sure, so any advice is based on personal experience. That kind of advice is helpful, for sure...but is not something that can be written in stone. Research is needed to prove the various theories that abound.
Best, Timaca
Those are useful links, thanks Timaca.
I think these days we are getting to a stage where at least a provisional roadmap can be made.
Such a roadmap might be useful for people that turn out to have treatable or partially treatable forms of ME/CFS, such as ME/CFS caused by
parvovirus B19 (I believe this form often resolves with intravenous immunoglobulin); ME/CFS caused by
Chlamydia pneumoniae (treatable with antibiotics),
herpes only ME/CFS (which we now know Montoya has a good partial treatment for);
chronic EBV infection (which produces symptoms identical to ME/CFS);
focal infections like bone infections (which produce symptoms identical to ME/CFS); for
enterovirus ME/CFS, Chia's oxymatrine treatment gets useful results in 25% of cases;
mold initiated ME/CFS is often improved, and even resolved on occasions, by removal of the mold triggers, and other actions. ME/CFS like symptoms also arise from infection with
Coxiella burnetii,
Brucella,
Toxoplasma gondii and these are all treatable.
Ross River virus also causes ME/CFS symptoms.
So a roadmap to guide newcomers through testing and treating all these might be useful.
I've had people on my blog desperate for answers to their symptoms, and a few have eventually found they had a treatable form of ME/CFS, which is lucky for them. I wonder how many people there are that have a treatable or partially treatable forms of ME/CFS, but are not aware of it, due to insufficient testing, or just lack of knowledge of treatments available.
OK, for the rest of us, this roadmap is not going to help much, as the reasons for many cases of ME/CFS are both obscure, and are likely due to more than one cause though eventually, if you include predisposing factors on this roadmap (like IBS, interstitial cystitis, urinary tract infections, nasty gut bacteria), and suggestions on individually treating these predisposing factors, you could develop a "pick and match" roadmap, that people could use to taylor a ME/CFS treatment specifically for them. This is what will probably happen anyway in the future: all the causes factors in the ME/CFS equation will be recognized, and people with multiple factors driving their ME/CFS will be treated accordingly.