Oct. 20, 2017 -- It is a very complex, very real physical disease, and one that for years has caused uncertainty, confusion and even dismissal by many medical professionals. But now, thanks to a new, multi-year grant, there is hope for a better understanding and treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, or CFS.

In late September, the National Institutes of Health committed $7.2 million in grants for fiscal year 2017, with plans to fund the work for five years. If funding remains steady, grants will total more than $35 million.

The money comes with a goal: Find the biological roots of CFS, which is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis, or ME. The federal agency announced the grant to fund the creation and work of three collaborative research centers and another center that will coordinate research data.

“NIH is serious about” the disease, says Vicky Whittemore, PhD, an expert on the disorder and leader of an NIH working group that coordinates the agency’s activities related to the disease.

The three research centers -- at Columbia University in New York City, Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, and the Jackson Laboratory, an independent nonprofit research institution in Bar Harbor, ME -- will approach the disease from different angles. A clinical study is also underway on the NIH’s campus in Bethesda, MD.

“Our strategy, with these three centers and the study led by Avindra Nath, MD, at NIH, is to really understand the underlying cause or causes in large numbers of individuals,” says Whittemore, who notes that the disease affects different people in different ways. “We hope that research leads to clinical trials of targeted treatments. That’s the long-term goal.”

Ian Lipkin, MD, heads the effort at Columbia University.

“With the NIH paying attention to this, the rest of the medical community should realize that this is something that needs to be addressed,” says Lipkin, who in recent years has struggled to recruit researchers to study the disease. “This will have an impact on medical schools and the medical community.”

That’s a crucial point, because less than a third of medical schools are now taking a look at ME/CFS. Fewer than half of medical textbooks cover it. That’s led to widespread ignorance and misconceptions about the disease, which affects as many as 2.5 million Americans.