Can a new blood test diagnose Chronic Fatigue Syndrome?

Myalgic encephalomyelitis, also called chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), is a long-term condition that can affect different parts of the body. The most common symptoms of CFS are extreme tiredness, insomnia, cognitive issues (brain fog), and worsening of symptoms following physical or mental activity. The cause of CFS is currently unknown. 

There is no specific test for CFS, the main diagnostic tool available to medical practitioners is the patient’s presentation and ruling out other conditions that could cause similar symptoms. For obvious reasons this ‘diagnostic tool’ can be unreliable. This may be about to change following a recent medical research paper that was published in the Journal of Translational Medicine. The paper suggests a blood test has been developed that can diagnose CFS. Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Oxford Biodynamics looked at how DNA was folded in patients diagnosed with CFS to determine if there were any tell-tale signs of CFS. They examined blood samples from 47 patients with severe CFS and 61 healthy adults. According to the research, a unique pattern was identified in people with CFS that was not seen in healthy individuals enabling a test to be developed to identify the present of this unique pattern. The likelihood of a test being positive if the patient has CFS is 92% and the probability the test will rule out negative cases is 98%.

What the experts say

Professor Pshezhetskiy, from the UEA said “This is a significant step forward, for the first time, we have a simple blood test that can reliably identify ME/CFS – potentially transforming how we diagnose and manage this complex disease.” However, the researchers have warned any diagnostic blood test has to be both highly sensitive and specific to that condition. Professor Chris Ponting, chair of medical bioinformatics at the University of Edinburgh, said some of the claims made by the research team were “premature” and further research is required before the test can be considered for clinical application.

Experts have estimated the cost of the blood test will be around £1,000. 

If a blood test can accurately diagnose CFS, in a clinical setting, this would be a major development in CFS cases. Compensators would have an accurate diagnostic tool, costing approximately £1,000, to confirm if a claimant has CFS which is one of the key challenges in managing these types of cases. This development could save compensators a significant amount of time and costs in the challenging the diagnosis and allow compensators to focus on causation and quantum issues. Experts who are able to accurately administer and interpret the blood test results would need to be identified. However, one concern is with such accurate testing there is a risk one could see a rise in CFS cases, because if the blood test is accepted as being a reliable diagnostic tool it will be very difficult to challenge the diagnosis.  

Final thoughts

While the research is still at an early stage this is an encouraging development, although there are risks to compensators associated with it at this stage. It will also be interesting to see if at some future point blood tests could be developed to diagnosis other conditions such as chronic myalgia or long COVID.

Weightmans Pain Technical Unit will be keep a close eye on developments.