Thanks Jace....I forgot about this map. It has really filled in. I've been curious for some time why we see minimal reports of ME/CFS from certain areas such as the Middle East, Asia, and South America. I know that language barriers are not the issue because I interact with 100's of people from those areas on line in non ME/CFS forums. Can't be censorship either. I remain curious.
Gosh! On a quick glance, that geographical pattern looks suspiciously like exactly what I'd have predicted, I'll have to look into this more closely later...
First task is to compare in detail with the Multiple Sclerosis distribution (which I first learned about via the
Wikipedia page on MS). MS has a geographical spread based quite dramatically on location, specifically on latitude bands. Many studies have attempted to explain by looking at sunlight incidence, etc. but they haven't got very far with those theories. One thing that's been found is that what seems to be crucial is what latitude band the individual grew up in, ie where they were living during their teenage years. Which of course points clearly at an environmental factor. (There is obviously also a genetic component but of course only real idiots think that nature vs nurture is a good subject for an argument and should be pointed firmly in the direction of the nearest coin and told to play with it until they understand it...)
It seems there is much controversy over whether this distributions is due to genetic or environmental factors. There are known genetic factors in MS so the research world has divided into a war between those with genetic vs environmental emphasis.
It seemed to me when I read about all this that the most obvious explanation for the observed geographical spread for MS was not "incidence of sunlight" (the geographical factor that's received most attention) but rather some kind of organism that grows in certain conditions, and of course by that I mean molds and fungus, and specifically, certain classes of toxic mold.
The geographical distribution on the ME/CFS outbreaks/clusters googlemap looks awfully familiar...
Here's the prevalence map for MS:
http://www.atlasofms.org/query.aspx?pq=yes&s=1&q=3&r=Global&year=2007
I'd be most interested if others can observe any differences between these two distribution maps, or whether they are basically the same distribution. If they are basically the same, in sufficient detail to be a striking observation, that would be huge news for us I think.