Hypersensitivity

From MEpedia, a crowd-sourced encyclopedia of ME and CFS science and history

Patients with ME/CFS can have a range of hypersensitives, which may mild or severe. Hypersensitives recognized in ME/CFS include sensitivity to:

Hyperalgesia, which is a greatly increased sensitivity to pain, may also occur.[1]

Symptom recognition[edit | edit source]

Canadian Consensus Criteria[edit | edit source]

Perceptual and sensory disturbances count as one of the Neurological/Cognitive manifestations used for diagnosis, the examples given are: "spatial instability and disorientation and inability to focus vision". Ataxia, muscle weakness and fasciculations are common. There may be overload phenomena: cognitive, sensory–e.g., photophobia and hypersensitivity to noise–and/or emotional overload, which may lead to "crash" periods and/or anxiety."1,2 

The following hypersensitivity and sensory symptoms are recognized in Appendix 4:

International Consensus Criteria[edit | edit source]

Hypersensitivities are divided into a few main areas, as optimal diagnostic criteria:

Allergies[edit | edit source]

Most hypersensitives are not allergies and are mediated by different antibodies, for example a peanut allergy causing anaphylactic shock is a Type I hypersensitivity mediated by the IgE antibody, and is different to a Type IV hypersensitivity such as contact dermitatis caused by poison ivy.[3]

Only Type I hypersensitives are classed as allergies.

Antibodies[edit | edit source]

A number of different antibodies have a role in hypersensitivities, including IgG.[3]

Notable studies[edit | edit source]

See also[edit | edit source]

Learn more[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]