Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disorder that causes extreme fatigue - the kind that doesn't go away even after the individual has rested, it lasts an unusually long time that prevents the sufferer from going on with his or her daily activities.

Causes are unknown. There is also no cure, but the condition is treated just to improve the symptoms to increase the sufferers' quality of life.

Now, according to UNSW researchers, the blood may hold the clues as to what goes on in the brain of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.

The UNSW team led by Professor Andrew Lloyd of the Centre for Infection and Inflammation Research has studied the differences in gene expression patterns in the blood of people who either recover promptly after acute glandular fever or develop the prolonged illness called post-infective syndrome.

According to Professor Lloyd:

"These [35] genes might point to the nature of the disease process that underlies CFS, which is currently unknown. None of them are ones that I would have predicted, except for those relating to neurotransmitters. Some of them relate to transport of zinc and other metal ions within the cell, which may suggest a fundamental disturbance in cellular function.

There are very few complex diseases which have been comprehensively analysed, with large scale and longitudinal studies, like this. It sets a standard for highly sophisticated, comprehensive gene expression studies in the blood of all sorts of human diseases from rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis through to schizophrenia."

Findings appear in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

To know more about CFS, read Tales of CFS.

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