It is certainly correct to state that there is significant disquiet amongst patient groups over the extremely limited "management and treatment" recommendations made by the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE) for CFS/ME - largely because they failed to take on board all the available international evidence - however, the guidelines do not actually state that ME/CFS is a psychiatric illness as indicated in the article.

It is though fair to say that NICE did disappointingly fudge the issue of disease classification, despite the fact that Myalgic Encephalomyelitis has been classified as a neurological illness by the World Health Organisation since 1969.

Unfortunately the emergence of a broad and weak diagnostic label of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) in the late1980s, has done little to help research, diagnosis, or inform appropriate illness management. Dr Vance Spence, Chairman of ME Research UK, underlined this at our Conference in Coventry in November 2005, referring to a lack of diagnostic clarity and stating that "CFS can mean whatever people want it to mean". Recent genetic research certainly points towards a number of sub-types under this very broad "diagnostic" label.

Whilst some patients can and do improve over time, sometimes without any "treatments", sadly despite their own best efforts a significant number do not. Alarmingly patient group surveys suggest that some patients may have actually been made worse by the at least one of the "treatments" (graded exercise therapy) now being advocated by NICE as "best evidence".

We believe therefore that it's imperative that the high quality and promising biomedical research (largely being being funded by patients themselves) and carried out by charitable organisations such as ME Research UK and the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research Foundation is also supported by the Medical Research Council.

Patients and medical professionals can learn more about some of the very latest biomedical research findings at forthcoming conferences in Cambridge and London, being hosted by ME Research UK http://www.meresearch.org.uk/ and Invest in ME http://www.investinme.org/index.htm. - Duncan Cox, Tracey Browett and Patricia Lake, Co-ordinators, Warwickshire Network for ME.