The complete answer to this question is clearly important and not yet fully established. However the families of patients that have succumb to this disease may hold a different opinion. ME has a variety of manifestations and outcomes, some patients improve but many more follow a chronic trajectory. Lifelong disability is common.
Paul R. Cheney M.D., Ph.D. Charlotte, NC: At best, it is a prolonged post-viral syndrome with recovery or improvement within one to five years. At worst it is a nightmare of increasing disability with both physical and neurocognitive complications. For the individual Patient
Severity of the illness for many is an extreme protracted fluctuating misery. For many the pain is the worst factor. For others the infectious flare-ups can be the worst, a consequence of immune dysfunction, leading at times to organ damage and life threatening events, including cancer. In some patients the infection of the Brain, spinal cord and nervous system are the most disabling. This can be expressed in numerous ways; the disruption of the autonomic system control of temperature, heart rate, intestinal motility; the hypothalamic damage affecting many organs and systems from hormone and homeostatic disruption; the demyelinative and degenerative effects on the nervous system that can result in visual changes, memory or attention deficits to dementia, further this pathology can also produce the twitching, spasms, tremors, cramp, dystonia, weakness, numbness and in rare cases paralysis. Metabolic disturbance is another major area of the disease. A key factor is the damage to the mitochondria which leads to the pathological extreme exhaustion. This damage to the principal metabolic source of energy has profound effects throughout the body, starving the muscles, brain and immune system of energy for function and repair. The abnormal metabolism includes altered body chemistry that can also lead to severe chemical sensitivity to general toxification from common exogenous chemicals. Metabolic and chemistry changes for example can also lead to osteoporosis, disc and spinal degeneration. Most patients will suffer from a variety of these symptoms, just in varying degrees.
