• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Name preference? CFS, ME-itis (2 versions), ME-opathy, SEID, or Ramsay

Name preference? CFS, CFIDS, ME-itis, ME-opathy, SEID, or Ramsay

  • CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • CFIDS (Chronic Fatigue and Immune Dysfunction Syndrome)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • ME-itis (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis)

    Votes: 18 24.7%
  • ME-opathy (Myalgic Encephalopathy)

    Votes: 4 5.5%
  • SEID (Systemic Exertion Intolerance Disease)

    Votes: 18 24.7%
  • Ramsay's Disease (or Ramsay Disease)

    Votes: 27 37.0%
  • Other – eponymous (Please post any suggestions in the thread.)

    Votes: 1 1.4%
  • Other – non-eponymous (Please post any suggestions in the thread.)

    Votes: 2 2.7%
  • Don't know / No strong preference

    Votes: 3 4.1%
  • ME-itis 2 (Myalgic Encephalitis)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    73

MeSci

ME/CFS since 1995; activity level 6?
Messages
8,231
Location
Cornwall, UK
Ramsay disease: VIA: Maryann Spurgin with Liz Willow and 4 others.
1. Dr. L. O. Simpson's work on misshapen RBC's lasting for days following excercise, leading to inadequate delivery of oxygen to tissues & organs & failure of the blood to clear toxins.

There is an old thread about RBC shape in ME/CFS here. Looks really interesting.
 
Messages
87
Idiopathic is a good old fashioned simple term understood as signifying a real disease by all clinicians, researchers and scientists. It should be included as part of the name for our thing.
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
Idiopathic is a good old fashioned simple term understood as signifying a real disease by all clinicians, researchers and scientists. It should be included as part of the name for our thing.

I'm not so sure about that? When CFS was invented they used Ideopathic fatigue to describe other fatigue of an unknown origin that was not CFS. There was no understanding or explanation that this was a separate disease or groups of diseases as far as I could see. They were describing a symptom with an unknown origin in general.
 
Last edited:
Messages
87
I'm not so sure about that? When CFS was invented they used Ideopathic fatigue to describe other fatigue of an unknown origin that was not CFS. There was no understanding or explanation that this was a separate disease or groups of diseases as far as I could see. They were describing a symptom with an unknown origin in general.

You are right. For some unclear reason they differentiated CFS from idiopathic CF by the difference of having 3 instead of 4 out of 8 symptoms. One symptom less and you had simply chronic fatigue instead of chronic fatigue syndrome. I don't understand why they did this. It has not been of use and the distinction has been virtually ignored. All of ME/CFS etc is idiopathic.
 

Dolphin

Senior Member
Messages
17,567

Sidereal

Senior Member
Messages
4,856
Well, I'll be damned. Even Byron Hyde of all people agreed in his 1992 textbook on ME/CFS that ME-itis is an incorrect name. Page 4:

Many readers may not understand the significance of the above term that has been used in Great Britain for many years to describe this disease process. My refers to muscle and algic to pain. Encephalo refers to brain, myel to spinal cord and itis denotes inflammation. The name Myalgic Encephalomyelitis is consistent with our knowledge of the disease process except for the suffix itis; there is no evidence of active inflammation. A pathologically more appropriate name would be Myalgic Encephalomyelopathy -opathy simply referring to the fact that there is pathology.