- Estimates of prevalence of CFS/ME in the UK range from 0.4% to 2.6%. A general practice with 10,000 patients is likely to have 30-40 patients with CFS/ME.
- Seven different categories of intervention have been evaluated for their potential use in the management of CFS/ME: behavioural, immunological, antiviral, pharmacological, supplements, complementary/alternative and multi-treatment.
- Interventions for which there is evidence of effectiveness from randomised controlled trials include cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET).
- Bed or wheelchair restricted patients have been excluded in some of the studies and only one study included young people under 18 years of age. This raises questions about the applicability of findings to all people with CFS/ME.
- Further research is needed into i) how sub-groups of patients may respond differently to treatments and ii) the potential additive or combined effects of treatments where more than one therapy is used.
- The large number of outcome measures used makes standardisation of outcomes a priority for future research.
- Future research needs to combine scientific rigour with patient acceptability, and good quality research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of pacing, ideally in comparison with CBT and GET.
