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The fight to have thyroid-adrenal support and antiviral treatment for ME sufferers accepted by the NHS is to be resolved one way or the other.
At issue are allegedly unlawful National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines that exclude the two treatments.
A recent High Court hearing in London was told that the guidance is biased, or appeared to be biased, a view that is “shared across the ME community”.
That allegation centres on recommendations that ME sufferers only be treated with cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET).
It is alleged that the NICE group included members who had a “predisposition” to recommend CBT and GET, and that they had been “perversely or irrationally recommended … to the exclusion of other treatments”.
The case was brought by Kevin Short and Douglas Fraser, both of whom suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), or chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which affects an estimated 250,000 people in the UK.
The High Court is expected to make a decision imminently. The current guidelines were introduced last August.
Copyright Press Association 2009
