On December 9, we met with two assistant section chiefs of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare’s Intractable Diseases Division (the Specific Diseases Division was re-named effective October 1, 2015), where we submitted our most recent request letter to Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki.
We reported on recent international ME/CFS developments, including on research papers from Stanford University and Columbia University, the U.S. National Institute of Health’s October 2015 announcements, and the effort by ME researchers and patients worldwide seeking to challenge the 2011 Lancet paper on the PACE trial. We informed the Ministry of the Association’s outreach efforts with The Japan Society of Neurology, such as our hosting of an ME information booth at the Society’s 2015 annual conference. In light of NIH’s announcement that ME research would now be led by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), we requested the Ministry to also research ME/CFS as a neurological disease here in Japan.
Japan ME Association 