AIDS TREATMENT NEWS No. 093; December 15, 1989
John S. James
CFIDS, like AIDS, is an infectious disease that causes serious immune-system malfunction. In 1984-1985, a major outbreak among residents at Incline Village, Nevada, affected 300 people; since then the disease has become a widespread epidemic, with thousands of cases.
While few people die from CFIDS, about a third become seriously disabled, often for months or years. CFIDS, like AIDS, can also cause neurological symptoms, or lead to lymphomas. CFIDS is more contagious than AIDS, although most people exposed do not become ill. The illness appears not to be sexually transmitted. It affects women two to three times as often as men. Treatments, including acyclovir, ketoconazole, and gamma globulin, may be helpful in some cases.
As with AIDS (although for different reasons) government agencies and medical professionals have been slow to respond to CFIDS. Recently, however, important progress has been made. Milestones include publication by the U. S. Centers for Disease Control of official criteria for diagnosis, and a major scientific conference in San Francisco in April 1989.
The best single information source on CFIDS (also called CFS, for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) is The CFIDS Chronicle, published by Community Health Services, P. O. Box 220398, Charlotte, NC 28222-0398, phone 704/362-CFID.
Contact for AIDS Organizers
Persons interested in developing working relationships between CFIDS and AIDS organizations should contact Jan Montgomery, at the Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome Foundation, 3543 Eighteenth St. #20, San Francisco, CA 94110, 415/525-6415.
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