huh, neat.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

huh, neat. Scientists figured out a way to test for epigenetic changes to DNA folding to detect ME/CFS and believe they can use the same technique to develop a test for long covid as well https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/11/251102205021.htm

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

chronic fatigue syndrome is one of those illnesses that is currently hard to diagnose because it requires doctors to believe their patients reports about their symptoms, and they have to sort out whether or not it's that or one of the other things with overlapping symptoms they don't believe are real

[joshjers@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@aeva Yeppppp

My cousin has it and good god I would not wish it on anyone

...and it legitimately took years (a decade)? before he was able to even find a doctor that believed it was a thing

[photex@icosahedron.website]

@aeva I got diagnosed at 20 but my parents told me it was full of shit and that it was a fake disease to sell prescriptions or something.

I’ve been coming to the conclusion lately that this was not likely the only diagnosis I’ve been given in my life that my parents refused to acknowledge.

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@JoshJers it's amazing how much work the healthcare system heaps on you when you're least able to handle it

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@photex it's amazing how bad people want to believe in the idea of "lazy people" despite it lacking any scientific basis what so ever

[unchartedworlds@scicomm.xyz]

@aeva

I'm scared for the people who get the false negatives on this new test. There's so much denial around ME/CFS already, I can already imagine the "see, it's negative, now shut up" that could drown out the reality of "it misses some cases".

But gonna be useful for the people who get the positive confirmations. And maybe there'll be another test in due course that'll pick up the others.

#MECFS #testing #research

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@unchartedworlds in my limited experience with stigmatized health conditions, a positive test serves as a fast track to treatment, a negative test usually has the caveat of "probably negative", and your actual outcome in either case mostly still boils down to how competent your care team is. If a false negative is enough to prevent someone from eventually getting access to treatment they probably weren't going to get it otherwise :/

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@unchartedworlds on the other hand having a test available will mean a lot of people who wouldn't have been able to get treatment before will have a chance

[aeva@mastodon.gamedev.place]

muting this thread. i'm not really looking for persuasive arguments from strangers about why i shouldn't feel hopeful about the future at this time