Is the tide turning on ME research?
Inside Health
BBC
4.4 • 575 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
ME – also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome – has long been one of medicine’s most perplexing conditions. With no definitive diagnostic test and a legacy of scepticism in parts of the medical community, patients have often struggled to be believed. But a surge of new research may finally be shifting the landscape. The emergence of Long COVID – a condition with striking similarities to ME – has accelerated scientific interest and opened new lines of inquiry into the underlying biology of both illnesses.
In this episode, James Gallagher speaks to Dr Chris Ponting about the latest DecodeME results, which point to a strong genetic component to ME. And Professor Rosemary Boyton outlines the ambition behind the new Rosetta Stone study, designed to build a detailed evidence base of shared biomarkers across ME and Long COVID. James also hears from Catherine and Jo, who have lived with ME for many years. They describe their diagnostic journeys and how they manage their symptoms in their daily lives.
Presenter: James Gallagher Producer: Alice Lipscombe-Southwell Researcher: Tom Hunt Editors: Erika Wright and Ilan Goodman
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | I'm no longer ravenous. I'll no longer eat until I fall asleep. |
| 0:11.0 | The Hunger Game, a new five-part series exploring the meteoric rise of weight loss drugs. |
| 0:16.0 | It's been an incredible story with these drugs. |
| 0:18.1 | The uptake, the amount of product that's been sold, the amount of money |
| 0:21.2 | is cost. What the drugs do, how they work, and the knock-on effects of their widespread use. |
| 0:26.5 | We'll be sitting here in three years' time going, oh, it caused problems that we're now going to have to |
| 0:31.6 | fix. The Hunger Game with me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.0 | Thank you. me, Professor Gilesio. Listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:45.8 | I think the ability to be physically active is huge for me because I loved that. |
| 0:50.1 | I thrived on it. |
| 0:51.5 | I was energetic. |
| 0:53.3 | I was playing tennis. We played a lot of music. I played the |
| 0:59.2 | piano. I had a good education and I had really hoped to kind of make use of that and contributed |
| 1:07.5 | something and I feel that ability to do that was taken away. That was Catherine. |
| 1:14.4 | She didn't want to use her real name in this programme, but she's been living with ME since the 1990s. |
| 1:19.7 | I remember feeling this kind of burning anger that I was stuck with this illness that not only was the no treatment, but there was |
| 1:32.1 | a lot of dismissal, disbelief. One friend said to me that I was really lucky to have so much |
| 1:39.3 | time to rest. I didn't want to rest. I wanted to live. And this is Jo. She's had Emmy for 23 years. |
| 1:47.8 | It's 9am and my husband David has brought me a cup of tea in bed so that I can take my morning |
| 1:52.5 | meds and wait for pain relief to kick in. Most people think ME-CFS is about being a bit tired |
| 1:58.9 | but there are so many symptoms that you can never be quite sure what you're in for. |
... |
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