We recommend this excellent research review on the role of reactivated viral and bacterial infections in the CFS/ME disease process. Dr.Kent Holtorf, MD, in an article for ProHealth, reviews 20 years of medical research pointing to the chronic reactivation of herpes viruses (EBV, CMV, HHV-6) and bacteria (mycoplasma, chlamydia pneumoniae, and Lyme disease), in ME/CFS and FM.

He also explains why the use of normal antibody tests, IgG and IgM, which normally detect the presence of a new and active infections do not identify chronic, reactivated infections in these illnesses. Moreover, these reactivated infections do not normally occur in the blood and sera, but in the cellular tissue (nerves, brain and white blood cells)—another factor making them hard to detect. He also identifies a number of markers that may indicate an underlying chronic infection in ME/CFS. Read the article.