Neuroimmunomodulation (NIM)
What does this mean for CFS patients?

The symptoms of CFS can now be understood as a classic example of an NIM disorder. Unfortunately, even though it is accepted that CFS generally results from a minor infection, it is still believed that there can be no way such an infection, even if minor immune abnormalities still remain, could trigger the large number of disabling physical and mental symptoms of the nervous and endocrine systems that patients experience. This is totally out-dated thinking, and has been so for a number of years now, because physicians have failed to come-up-to-speed on the new NIM science, of the general adaptation syndrome (GAS).

By Dr Jed Gallagher BSc MSc - CFSsocNIMr

What is neuroimmunomodulation?  - CFIDS Homepage

Unfortunately, even those scientists and researchers who are aware of NIM have been applying the narrower NIM-related science of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) to CFS. This is understandable because they have clinically failed to distinguish and differentiate CFS, as a new and specific disease, from the chronic fatigue states common to many psychological disorders. They characterise CFS as a post-infectious atypical depressive state, producing non-specific psychosomatic symptoms, and perpetuating emotional stress-related maladaptive coping strategies. If CFS was a PNI-related disorder then this approach would be perfectly valid, but the fact is, CFS is a much more physiologically fundamental NIM disorder.

It is now known that if NIM-based adaptation were to remain in place following a minor infection then its effects on the nervous, endocrine and immune systems could produce a very disabling sub-clinical disorder. Particularly, if the adaptation was produced only by the modulatory, not regulatory, functions of the NIM system related to the GAS. Standard tests of blood - endocrine and immune levels - for known diseases would show only minor abnormalities, within normal ranges, and not the gross abnormalities associated with conventional disease diagnosis. This is what is found in CFS (43) (47,48). This is because abnormalities of adaptation only become manifest during functional tests - that is, tests of the set operating range of regulatory mechanisms. Adaptive diseases are dysfunctions in the changes of these set operating ranges.

What is neuroimmunomodulation? - CFSsocNIMr

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