ME/CFS – Japan ME Association

International Release of Documentary on ME in Japan (VIMEO)

Japan ME Association is pleased to announce the international release of “Hope to Our Hands: The Hidden Story of ME/CFS in Japan,” an English-subtitled version of our documentary film on ME patients in Japan. It may be streamed or downloaded on VIMEO here.

Originally created to raise awareness among government health policymakers and the general public in Japan and screened domestically since its completion in 2018, the new English-subtitled film (produced from an abridged version targeted to Japanese medical professionals) brings the film to an international audience for the first time.

The situation of Japanese ME/CFS patients has long been unknown outside Japan. Most Japanese patients lack the English skills to access online information from abroad. Amidst this isolation, the Japanese government and medical profession have continued to neglect the disease as a “fatigue” illness with psychogenic factors for the past 30 years. It is also the story of Japan ME Association, founded by Mieko Shinohara, who fell ill with ME while studying abroad in the United States, and patients’ efforts to create much-needed change.

Recommended by the Japan Medical Association president and the former Japanese Society for Neurology president and receiving the strong support of patients and doctors alike, it is our hope that in sharing the documentary, Japan can begin to join the international ME/CFS community to advocate for patients’ lives.

Concerns regarding the Japanese Ministry of Health’s Fact Sheet on ME

Japanese legislators rely on the Japanese Ministry of Health for accurate and current information on diseases. For this reason, our Association was deeply concerned when we discovered (on February 7, 2019) the fact sheet on ME/CFS that the Ministry of Health currently distributes to Japanese legislators who request information from the Ministry to learn about the disease.

Presented in a one-page fact sheet, the information (translated below) contains careless inaccuracies which combine to depict ME/CFS as a mild condition with psychiatric components. It is careless and misleading in what it includes and what it excludes: ME/CFS is summarized as a list of symptoms that any healthy person might have: chronic malaise, fatigue, headaches, and cognitive dysfunction. The list notably includes depression, which is not a symptom of the disease, while it excludes the hallmark ME symptom of post-exertional malaise—the prolonged worsening of physical and cognitive function following physical or cognitive exertion.

Further, the fact sheet prominently lists several psychiatric conditions as “co-morbid symptoms” in the second sentence of the short document. We are concerned that taken together with the mention of antidepressants and psychological therapy in the treatment section of the document, any individual relying on this fact sheet alone would conclude that ME/CFS is a mild condition with psychiatric components, misrepresenting both the medical literature about the nature and severity of the illness and reflecting a denial and disregard for the lived reality of ME patients.

The fact sheet surprisingly makes no mention of the Health Ministry’s own 2014 ME/CFS Patient Survey, which found that approximately 30% of ME patients in Japan are severe patients who are bedridden or close and require assistance with activities of daily living and that moderate and severe ME/CFS patients are unable to work.

The fact sheet also conveys the incorrect impression that the illness was first reported in 1988, omitting information about earlier reports which led to its classification in 1969 as a neurological disorder in the WHO International Classification of Diseases.

The following is an English translation of the fact sheet in its entirety:

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

(1) What is ME/CFS

(1) Summary

A syndrome where patients are affected by severe generalized malaise of unknown cause followed by strong fatigue along with symptoms such as mild fever, headache, muscle pain, a feeling of exhaustion, cognitive dysfunction, and depression which continue over a long period. Comorbid symptoms include mood disorders, somatic symptom disorders, anxiety disorders, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome.

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a syndrome that was reported by the United States Centers for Disease Control in 1988 (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: CFS). In the United Kingdom it was also called myalgic encephalomyelitis (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis: ME) but in recent years it is being said that these might be the same syndrome.

(2) Cause

The involvement of infectious disease, immune function abnormalities, autonomic nervous system abnormalities, and endocrine abnormalities have been suggested but the cause is unknown.

(3) Diagnostic criteria / Treatment

At present no diagnostic criteria which uses objective markers has been created in any country. Vitamins, antidepressants, Chinese herbal medicine, and psychological therapy are being tried, but no effective treatment methods have been established.

Status of the 2017 Proposed ME/CFS Treatment Guidelines (Draft)

In late 2017, JMEA submitted its opposition to the publication of national ME/CFS treatment guidelines for Japan (Draft), which was scheduled to be published in spring 2018. The document was not published in spring 2018 but was set to be filed as a research report with the government health agency Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED). We are currently awaiting the release of this report and will provide a further update on the research report when it becomes publicly available.

The Association is deeply grateful to the international ME/CFS medical experts and advocacy organizations which kindly responded to our request to provide comments on the draft treatment guidelines document. We immediately shared your comments with the research committee which drafted the document and with the Ministry of Health.

In August 2018, we held a press conference at the Ministry of Health on the opinion letter we received from the International Association for CFS/ME (IACFS/ME) in response to our request for the association’s opinion on translated excerpts of the document. In the opinion letter, the IACFS/ME expressed concern that the document could be of potential harm to ME/CFS patients in Japan due to the recommendation of Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) as an effective treatment. The letter also shared our concern that the discussion in the document of behavioral interventions such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and yoga and of antidepressant drug therapy could give the mistaken impression that ME is a psychological illness which can be cured by such interventions. Questions from the press included why the opinions of the international and Japanese ME/CFS experts differed, among more specific questions about the document.

Japanese National Diet Adopts JMEA’s 2018 Petition for ME/CFS Research

We are pleased to announce that the Japanese National Diet has adopted Japan ME Association’s 2018 petition to the national government, “Petition Seeking Research Advancement for the Neurological Disease ME/CFS,” as a result of voting on the petition by the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, respectively. The adoption of our most recent petition follows the successful adoption of our formal petitions to the Japanese national legislature in 2014 and 2015, and again in 2016.

The petition was introduced to the 2018 Diet session by 99 Diet members across multiple political parties and submitted with more than 13,500 signatures. We are deeply grateful to all of the individuals (which included not only patients but those who first learned about ME/CFS through the petition effort) and Diet members who generously contributed to this significant result.

The petition will now be delivered to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet will produce approximately two reports annually to the House of Representatives on progress on the petition items.

ME/CFS has been classified in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases as a neurological disorder since 1969, and the disease has again been classified as a neurological disorder in the revised ICD-11 announced on June 18, 2018. This past April, AMED (the Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development) adopted the neurologist Dr. Takashi Yamamura’s research team for ME/CFS. ME/CFS was also featured in the scientific publication Nature this year, indicating that the disease is now recognized at a global level.

Japan ME Association greatly appreciates your continued support as we advocate for ME/CFS to be designated as Intractable/Rare Disease in Japan and for research advancements that will bring much-needed effective treatments to ME/CFS patients.

JMEA signs Letter to WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

As part of our collaborative actions with international ME advocacy organizations along with our participation in the global day for health equality for ME/CFS #MillionsMissing, Japan ME Association has co-signed an open letter to the WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus from the International Alliance for ME requesting a meeting to highlight the serious and significant impact of ME and to “explain why we are seeking urgent national and international action to increase research on [ME] and ease the suffering of patients around the world.”

We support this letter along with ME advocacy organizations from the UK, the United States, Australia, South Africa, Spain, and other countries in our sincere hope that the Director-General will accept the International Alliance’s invitation to speak with him to address the urgent situation facing ME patients worldwide at the WHO level. The full text of the letter can be found here.

JMEA to participate in #MillionsMissing at Geneva Event

On Saturday, May 12, 2018, Japan ME Association will participate in the global #MillionsMissing protest as part of the International Alliance for ME’s Visibility Event at Place Des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, the location of the World Health Organization (WHO).

#MillionsMissing is a global day of public action that calls for health equality for patients with ME. This year, Japan ME Association joins for the first time through its participation in the event in Geneva, where messages from Japanese ME patients will be displayed among those from many other countries. The International Alliance for ME is a joint international advocacy movement which aims to raise the profile and awareness of ME at the WHO level. The goal of the Alliance is to collaborate with organizations and individuals at the national and international levels to advocate for the adoption of a resolution by the WHO and its Member States recognizing ME as a “serious, chronic, complex and multisystem disease that frequently and dramatically limits the activities of affected patients (Institute of Medicine, 2015)” and to adopt measures to provide a global and coordinated public health response to ME.

JMEA believes that it is critically important to combine our efforts with ME advocacy organizations internationally to more effectively convey to the Japanese government the urgent need to improve the current public health response to ME. We firmly believe that advances at the WHO level and in other countries will positively influence the situation of ME patients in Japan and vice versa.

Our Opposition to Proposed National Treatment Guidelines for ME/CFS

Japan ME Association held a press conference at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s press club on December 14, 2017 to announce our opposition to the public draft of proposed “Treatment Guidelines for ME/CFS for Japan,” issued by the Research Committee for the Development of Treatments and Treatment Guidelines for ME/CFS for public comment. The proposed clinical treatment guidelines for ME/CFS are scheduled to be published in spring 2018 in Nihon Iji Shimpou, one of the most widely read medical journals in Japan. JMEA received a request to submit an external review in November 2017, and we announced our opposition to the proposed guidelines at the press conference. NHK, The Asahi Shimbun, The Sankei Shimbun, Kyodo News, and several regional media outlets attended.

JMEA believes that the proposed treatment guidelines do not provide an adequate, reliable, or safe basis for clinicians in Japan to make treatment decisions for ME/CFS patients in real-life clinical settings. The research committee evaluated various treatments to create the proposed treatment guidelines solely on the basis of a literature review (using an “Evidence-Based Medicine” analysis), with each treatment given an effectiveness grade of an ‘A’ to ‘I’ grade-rating (with an A-grade being the most effective).

The result is a document that merely discusses the results of the committee’s literature review, with no A-grade treatments and with a single B-grade treatment recommendation for Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) (all other treatments mentioned in the guideline document — CBT, antidepressants and other drug treatments, Chinese herbal medicines, and yoga — were rated C-grade or lower), with no discussion or guidance on how to distinguish among the appropriateness of the various treatments for actual ME/CFS patients, each with varying symptoms and severity of illness.

Further, the proposed treatment guidelines pose a risk to worsening the symptoms and overall health of ME/CFS patients in recommending Graded Exercise Therapy (GET) as the single treatment with the highest B-grade rating. In particular, gradually increasing aerobic exercise until the patient can return to their normal lives is recommended. (The guidelines recommend GET under the guidance of an appropriate instructor. However, as the document acknowledges apart from its recommendation, primary care doctors, rehabilitation specialists, and physical therapists in Japan do not have knowledge or training about ME/CFS or its symptoms.)

We believe that there is a serious problem where GET is set be established in the national treatment guidelines for Japan as the most highly-rated treatment where GET has been under harsh scrutiny and is being re-evaluated or rejected in the rest of the world. The document acknowledges in footnotes, for example, that the United States Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recently removed GET from its ME/CFS website. Nevertheless, GET is still presented in the proposed guidelines as a highly effective ME/CFS treatment based on the result of the committee’s “evidence-based medicine” literature analysis of research studies mostly from the United States and Europe. The guidelines cite to old studies where the diagnostic criteria used to screen patients are opaque, as well as to studies published in psychology journals and to the highly criticized PACE trial in its list of references in support of its treatment recommendations.

Recent research studies have shown that increasing exercise after a certain (low) threshold leads to a worsening of symptoms, with more medical institutions finally acknowledging this reality in the West. Japan and Japanese ME/CFS patients should not remain in the dark ages on this critical development.

In addition to posing a risk of worsening symptoms – especially where there is a complete lack of knowledge among Japanese physicians, physical therapists, and exercise specialists about ME/CFS and its symptoms, including the post-exertion exacerbation of symptoms – the recommendation of GET in the treatment guidelines will inevitably (and unnecessarily) deepen prevalent and mistaken beliefs about ME/CFS that are currently held among the vast majority of Japanese medical professionals (for example, that ME/CFS is a psychological illness that can be improved by gradually increasing exercise).

JMEA opposes the proposed treatment guidelines for the simple reason that they pose a serious risk to ME/CFS patients. With only a very small handful of doctors in Japan who have experience diagnosing and treating ME/CFS, the individuals who stand to suffer most from this document are ME/CFS patients in Japan of all severities of illness, including and especially severely ill patients.

We outlined the following seven reasons for our opposition to the proposed ME/CFS treatment guidelines in our written external review submitted to the research committee:

1. With no A-grade treatment recommendation and one single B-grade recommendation, the proposed ME/CFS treatment guidelines do not provide an adequate and reliable basis for physicians to determine safe and appropriate treatments for ME/CFS patients of varying illness severity in real-life clinical settings.

2. We are seriously concerned that the mostly highly recommended treatment in the proposed treatment guidelines for Japan will be for Graded Exercise Therapy (GET), a treatment being rejected around the world, and which poses a risk of worsening, and not improving, patients’ symptoms.

3. We question whether the research committee took into account the diagnostic criteria employed in the research studies that were evaluated for the “evidence-based medicine” literature review analysis on which the development of the proposed guidelines was based.

4. We question the paper’s analysis regarding the effectiveness of antidepressants to treat ME/CFS. If the selected literature included studies where there were a mix of ME/CFS patients and patients with major depression (which can easily result from the use of old diagnostic criteria such as the Oxford criteria), there is a question about the effectiveness of antidepressants to treat ME/CFS, distinguished from its effectiveness for treating depression, including secondary depression symptoms that some ME/CFS patients experience as a result of the social, financial, and personal consequences of living with a serious disabling physical illness. Because this distinction is not explained in the document, the proposed treatment guidelines gives a misleading impression about the effectiveness of antidepressants to treat ME/CFS itself.

5. In its explanation of ME/CFS, the draft treatment guidelines omit the fact that the ME is classified as a neurological disorder in the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases.

6. In its explanation of ME/CFS, the proposed treatment guidelines state that the estimated the number of ME/CFS patients in Japan is 300,000, while the most recent (2012) AMED research committee concluded that the number is 0.1% of the population (a number closer to 100,000).

7. The proposed treatment guidelines were created solely using a literature review, without considering clinical information or data.

Patients already suffer from being told that the illness is “all in their heads,” that they can be cured with a change in thinking, antidepressants, or exercise, with even close family members and friends not grasping the seriousness of the illness. Patients often do not look sick and are often viewed as being malingerers. As a patient association, we cannot permit a foreseeable situation to come about that harms patients by perpetuating and exacerbating the existing problems about how the illness is viewed, understood, and treated by medical professionals in Japan.

Questions from the press included: “Did the Ministry of Health commission the drafting of these guidelines?” “Why do you believe guidelines were drafted which would be opposed by patient groups?” “If the treatment guidelines are published, will they actually be implemented?” “What kind of treatments are patients currently receiving?” and “What position is the Japanese Neurology Society taking?”

We welcome your comments in English or Japanese on the serious issues raised by the proposed national treatment guidelines for ME/CFS. Please send them to the following email address for Japan ME Association: cfsnon@gmail.com

Democratic Party Hosts Study Group on ME/CFS

The Democratic Party’s Disability/Intractable Disease Policy Promotion group held a study group on ME/CFS at a conference room in the House of Representatives Building on May 11, 2017. The objective of the study group was to discuss ways to help bring relief to patients. 14 Democratic Party Diet members as well as the Secretaries to 23 additional Diet members attended.

With Representative Yasuko Komiyama serving as moderator, group chairman Representative Kazuhiro Haraguchi said in his opening remarks that when he disclosed [his] intractable disease osteogenesis five months ago, what surprised him was how many people are suffering, and that the study group would “give a voice to those who do not have a voice.” Japan ME Association president Mieko Shinohara then gave brief remarks, reading our request letter, and delivering the letter to Mr. Haraguchi.

House of Councillors member Ryuhei Kawada said, “When I met Ms. Shinohara six years ago, we discussed the name “chronic fatigue syndrome” made it difficult to understand the disease. The disease is now being researched as a neurological disease, and it is classified as a neurological disorder by the WHO. A therapy called rituximab may be emerging. We’d like study this disease as myalgic encephaloymelitis so that we can create a system where research advances may be made.”

Next, National Center for Neurology and Psychiatry (NCNP) Director of Immunology Dr. Takashi Yamamura provided an informational brief to the group as a medical specialist. Dr. Yamamura is a neurology specialist who has treated and researched multiple sclerosis (MS). He explained how, having received a request from the patient association to use the technology and learning at NCNP to treat this disease, “[we] began research and seeing patients with the belief that we have to do this. One problem of this disease is that patients may not be properly diagnosed at a hospital because abnormalities do not show up on current standard medical tests. Hospitals handle this by telling the patients that there are no abnormalities or that they should visit another hospital because they may be suffering from a psychiatric illness. It is a miserable situation, which is why I believe we must develop an objective diagnostic method.”

Dr. Yamamura explained the state of ME research, indicating that there is increased focus on abnormalities in the brain, including a PET image study indicating inflammation in the brain. Various diseases of inflammation should be treatable using drugs to effectively suppress inflammation. US patients advocated for research and the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is investigating the disease with the US government increasing the amount of funding. Oncologists in Norway have published two papers in which the cancer drug rituximab had a significant benefit for about 60% of patients. The issue is how to move forward in this research context. Rituximab is a drug that kills tumors of lymphocytes called B cells and is thought to be a drug that modifies the immune system, and the possibility of using immune modulators for ME is something that is discussed by many scientists overseas.

Dr. Yamamura explained his experience with treating the disease optic nerve myelitis, a disease where severe fatigue is a symptom. Inflammation occurs in the eyes and the spinal cord and fatigue is severe. He explained that in optic nerve myelitis, where the inflammatory substance IL6 is elevated in patients, drugs used for rheumatoid arthritis led to dramatic improvement of fatigue symptoms in these patients. Fatigue is closely related to the immune system and it is important to focus on the immune system.

Many of the ME patients examined demonstrated immune abnormalities. Detailed analysis of patients’ lymphocytes using state-of-the-art flow cytometry technology has shown some of the B cells with clear abnormalities. Since the drug rituximab targets B cells, it is consistent with rituximab being effective. There is a need to shift gears from conventional fatigue research to research for treatments that target the immune system, and there is momentum in this direction globally.

On June 14 there will be a meeting of the Federation of Clinical Immunology Societies in the United States, and the NIH has organized a special four-hour symposium. There will be a session to study information with other researchers on immune abnormalities in myalgic encephalomyelitis and Dr. Yamamura would participate; there was momentum, and he appealed to the study group that he wanted to bring relief to patients as soon as possible.

Japan ME Association president Mieko Shinohara gave brief remarks. She recounted that “I had an onset of ME while studying abroad in the United States in 1990, by 1992 I already knew that I had brain abnormalities by MRI, an immune modulating drug called Ampligen was being tested since 1988. The disease has been treated as the neuro immune disease in Western countries. The NIH study used the Canadian Consensus Criteria as the basis for its research, a document that points to the WHO’s classification of the disease as a neurological disorder, as with the clinical guidelines issued by the IACFS/ME in 2012. It is common knowledge in the West that the disease is a neuro (immune) disease.”

She also mentioned that the phase III trial study of rituximab being conducted in Norway would conclude in October, with patients all over the world awaiting the results. There are many patients who have been ill for 20-30 years. The Ministry of Health survey made clear that 30% of patients in Japan are severely ill patients who are bedridden or close. The patients want more than anything to get better and to have clinical trials proceed. We ask that politicians and Ministry of Health officals understand the situation that patients are in and to act in a way that brings relief to their suffering.

After showing the trailer for the documentary that the Association is filming, Mr. Hiraiwa from the Ministry of Health explained the current intractable disease law and reported on ME/CFS research so far.

A lively question and answer session followed. Among the questions asked were whether Japan would be ready to test rituximab if the Norwegian study published positive results; whether there was evidence of infectious disease in light of historical outbreaks; whether there were neurologists prepared to conduct clinical drug trials; whether a specialized outpatient practice at NCNP could be established; whether the disease could be designated as an intractable; and why ME and CFS were described together. Dr. Yamamura explained that if there is a positive study result for rituximab in Norway and it is approved for clinical use, information would need to be submitted by the drug maker to the Japanese review agency PMDA before it could be used in Japan; that while in many cases a virus has been involved in triggering the onset of ME, the abnormality of the immune system continues but there is no increase in the triggering virus in the patient’s body; and that the name ME/CFS is being used for official purposes. The Ministry of Health Disease Control Division expressed that the ministry would continue to consult with Dr. Yamamura and work together with the patient association.

Representative Yasuhiro Nakane gave closing remarks. “We would like to firmly understand the wishes of the patient association. The budget has been an obstacle in medicine and administration generally, but it is the role of politicians to do something. Please accept our best wishes as we work under the leadership of Mr. Haraguchi.”

The Japanese National Diet Adopts the Association’s 2016 Petition

We are very happy to report that both Houses of the Japanese National Diet adopted of Japan ME Association’s 2016 petition during this year’s extraordinary Diet session. With our last petition adopted by the House of Councillors in 2014 and by the House of Representatives in 2015, success on our petitions at the legislature for the third year in a row is a truly remarkable achievement. Our petition was the only one adopted by the House of Councillors’ Health, Labour and Welfare Committee during this Diet session and just one of two adopted by the House of Representatives.

Thanks to the hard work of many, 105 bipartisan Diet members across seven political parties and two independent Diet members agreed to introduce the petition, and we gathered nearly 14,000 signatures. The signatories included not only patients and their families, but people who learned about ME for the first time through the petition who wished to help improve the situation of patients. We express our heartfelt gratitude to everyone. The petition will be delivered to the Cabinet, and the Cabinet will issue updates on the petition items to the House of Representatives approximately twice annually.

We believe that our October international academic symposium (supported by the Ministry of Health and Japan Medical Association, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation, and where the President of the Japan Neurology Association gave remarks) had a positive impact on the petition’s adoption. We continue to hope for advances in research for ME by specialist researchers, the establishing of a national medical system where ME patients may receive medical treatment, and for research into effective treatments for the disease similar to that which is being conducted abroad. We thank you in advance for your continued support towards these important goals.