CHRONIC FATIGUE SYNDROME (CFS) AND FIBROMYALGIA ARE VASCULAR DISEASE, 2021, Chang and Figueredo

Obviously we hope for clarity, but we probably should be prepared for all sorts of sub groups in what is likely to be a heterogeneous population, and where sub groups randomly overlap with other known limited specificity targets e.g

Genetic risk factors for vasculitis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24217527/

Multi-trait GWAS of atherosclerosis detects novel pleiotropic loci
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.21.21257493v1

 

I expect this is what is going to happen. We have many overlapping findings, and share lots of biomarkers with sepsis and African sleeping sickness, to name just two. This is without getting into genetic product bistability, or issues with protein changes from RNA rearranging or failures in protein folding, which can alter the phenotype without an alteration in genotype.

This does not mean that there is not a very large percentage with a single common mechanism, but inherited genetics may merely alter how the gene, or gene group, is expressed, or how symptoms are expressed. Personally I am more interested in epigenetic changes in us than inherited genetics.

Or not. We await even more and better science, and for that "Aha!" or "Eureka!" moment when some study finally uncovers the core issue and we finally see it. The discovery might already have been made but we have either not yet realized its importance or not proven the hypothesis, possibly because of lack of research due to lack of funding, or even the sheer complexity of a disease with literally thousands of biomarkers.

Right now the data looks like ME is a spectrum disease or a group of similar diseases. This could change very fast if we make certain kinds of discoveries though.