RESEARCHER'S SPOTLIGHT

For many people, FM and CFS/ME remain a mystery. It's only through the efforts of doctors and researchers that we've been able to reveal what we know thus far about these debilitating illnesses.

This section spotlights some of the top people who are involved in FM and/or CFS/ME research. Select the doctor you'd like to learn more about by clicking their name in the list below.

• Lucinda Bateman, M.D.
• David S. Bell, M.D.
• Paul R. Cheney, M.D., Ph.D.
• Daniel J. Clauw, M.D.
• Garry F. Gordon, M.D.
• Leonard A. Jason, PhD.
• Nancy Klimas, M.D.

Dr. Lucinda Bateman completed her BS and MS at Brigham Young University (BYU), attended the John Hopkins School of Medicine, returned to the University of Utah for Internal Medicine residency, and became certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in 1991. She started a small private group practice in 1991 and practiced General Internal Medicine until 2000.

During this time, she proctored many students as Adjunct Volunteer Clinical Faculty for the University of Utah, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants (PA), medical students and residents, and was active on the staff at LDS Hospital. She was awarded Teacher of the Year four times while teaching in the Utah PA (Physician's Assistant) program. In 2000, she was one of three Utah internists chosen by her peers in Top Doctors, a national publication.

Dr. Bateman has served on the boards of the Easter Seals of Utah, International Association of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (IACFS/ME) and The CFIDS Association of America. She is the co-founder and current Executive Director of OFFER (The Organization for Fatigue Education and Research). Throughout her career, her interest has gradually become more focused on the diagnosis and management of unexplained chronic fatigue, CFS/ME and FM, inspired in part by the silent suffering of her sister, Shauna Bateman Horne, who had CFS for 15 years before she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma in 2000 and died from complications of a stem cell transplant in May of 2001.

In 2000, Dr. Bateman opened her fatigue consultation clinic and has since evaluated more than 1000 patients with chronic fatigue. She has lectured extensively on issues relating to chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia. Dr. Bateman's goal in establishing her fatigue consultation clinic and the non-profit organization OFFER is to encourage a more thoughtful evaluation process, sharing of information with patients and medical providers, and cooperative research efforts aimed at understanding the cause(s) of CFS/ME and FMS.

David S. Bell, MD graduated from Harvard College in 1967 with an AB degree in English literature followed by Boston University with an MD degree in 1971. Post doctoral training in pediatrics was completed in 1976 with subspecialty training in Pediatric Behavior and Developmental Disorders. In 1978 he began work at the University of Rochester but soon began a private practice in the town of Lyndonville, New York.

In 1985 nearly 220 persons became ill with an illness subsequently called chronic fatigue syndrome in the communities surrounding Lyndonville, New York. This illness cluster began a study of the illness which continues today. Dr. Bell is the author or co-author of numerous scientific papers on CFS, and, in 2003 was named Chairman of the Advisory Committee for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome of the Department of Health and Human Services. Publications include A Disease of A Thousand Names, (1988) and The Doctor's Guide to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, (1990).

Dr. Bell currently practices general medicine in Lyndonville, New York with his wife Nancy, a family nurse practitioner. Roughly half of the patients seen in the practice suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, orthostatic intolerance, and/or myalgic encephalomyelitis. His webiste address is: http://www.davidsbell.com.

Dr. Paul Cheney, MD, PhD, is Medical Director of the Cheney Clinic in Asheville, North Carolina.

For more than 25 years, Dr. Cheney has been a pioneering clinical researcher in the field of ME/CFS and has been an internationally recognized authority on the subject of ME/CFS.

He has published numerous articles and lectured around the world on ME/CFS. Dr. Cheney has been interested in many aspects of ME/CFS, and is author or co-author of numerous publications and scientific presentations in a range of fields relevant to the illness.

While practicing in Lake Tahoe in 1984-1987, Dr. Cheney, along with Dr. Dan Peterson, helped lead a research effort with the NIH, the CDC and Harvard University School of Medicine studying a localized outbreak of what would eventually be known as ME/CFS. He was a founding Director of the American Association of CFS (now the International Association for CFS/ME).

Dr. Cheney holds a PhD in Physics from Duke University in Durham, NC and is a graduate (MD) of Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA where he also completed his internal medicine residency. He is a board certified internist.

More recently, Dr. Cheney has been engaged in investigating the cardiac function of CFS patients, using Impedance Cardiography and Doppler Echocardiography. According to his paper presented at the 2007 IACFS/ME conference, "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients exhibit evidence of diastolic dysfunction at a level well above that reported for control populations of the same age. Energy dependent diastolic dysfunction would appear to be a hallmark of CFS and supports the hypothesis that CFS is a syndrome of cellular energy deficiency."

Since 1990, Dr. Cheney has headed the Cheney Clinic, presently located in Asheville, NC. The Cheney Clinic specializes in evaluating CFS patients and has expertise in diagnosis, disability support for and treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome. No single clinic has drawn as many CFS patients (currently over 5,000) from as many states (48) and foreign countries (22) as has the Cheney Clinic.

The Cheney Clinic has evaluated over 8,000 patients from 48 states and 24 foreign countries and participated in an FDA-approved multi-center, a biological response pharmaceutical drug trial using Ampligen, a biological response modifier.

Doctorate in Rheumatology, 1990, from Georgetown University Medical Center. Professor, Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan. He has served on the faculty at Michigan University since April 8, 2003.

Dr. Daniel J. Clauw oversees a multidisciplinary group that performs both mechanistic studies and clinical trials in overlapping conditions characterized by chronic pain and fatigue, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and Gulf War Illnesses. Dr. Clauw has been the P. I. of NIH and Department of Defense grants studying this spectrum of illness continuously since 1994. The Center currently has several million dollars per year in federal funding to study these disorders. Dr. Clauw and his group have been instrumental in establishing that the systemic conditions noted above, and regional pain syndromes such as interstitial cystitis, low back pain, and irritable bowel syndrome all have common pathogenic and clinical features.

One of the primary areas of interest of his group has been in studying sensory processing in these conditions, and in demonstrating that many patients with these conditions have a widespread disturbance in pain processing. Current work is establishing the nature of the central pain processing abnormality in these conditions, using a variety of approaches, including functional MRI. Dr. Clauw also directs the Center for the Advancement of Clinical Research (CACR) at the University of Michigan. The CACR provides infrastructure and support for clinical and translational research for the Medical School from protocol development through subject recruitment, performance, and monitoring of study conduct, to data management and analysis.

Dr. Garry F. Gordon received his Doctor of Osteopathy in 1958 from the Chicago College of Osteopathy in Illinois. He received his honorary MD degree from the University of California Irvine in 1962 and completed his Radiology Residency from Mt. Zion in San Francisco, California in 1964. For many years, he was the Medical Director of Mineral Lab in Hayward, California, a leading laboratory for trace mineral analysis worldwide.

Dr. Gordon is on the Board of Homeopathic Medical Examiners for Arizona and is Co-Founder of the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM). He is Founder/President of the International College of Advanced Longevity (ICALM) and Board Member of International Oxidative Medicine Association (IOMA).

B. A. in Psychology from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, 1971. Ph.D. in Clinical/Community Psychology from the University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, 1975. Dr. Jason is Director of the Center for Community Research at De Paul University.

In 2001, the Center for Community Research was established at De Paul University to provide permanent, dedicated space for externally funded research projects and to house research projects of colleagues associated with their work from Psychology and related disciplines.

Currently their grants are from NIH (NIDA, NIAID, NCI) and are devoted to CFS epidemiology, Smoking Prevention, and Oxford House evaluations. They believe that this is a service to De Paul University and the Psychology Department, as their grant activity brings in considerable resources to the university and helps support graduate students. In addition, there are many undergraduate volunteers for these projects, and frequently they are able to hire these students to become full time research assistants, which prepares them for future graduate studies.

B. A. and M.A. in Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N. Y. Earned his M.D. degree from Albany Medical College, NY, in 1974. Dr. Lapp completed residencies in both adult (internal) medicine and pediatrics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Lapp has maintained a private practice of medicine and pediatrics in Raleigh, NC. since 1978. Following three small epidemics of a chronic fatiguing illness in the Raleigh area, Dr. Lapp began collaborating with Dr. Paul Cheney in 1987, and from 1992 to 1980. Dr. Lapp acted as Medical Director of the Cheney Clinic in Charlotte. In August 1980, Dr. Lapp opened a Charlotte office for general medical consultations, with special interests in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, and related conditions.

Academically, Dr. Lapp has been elected to Tau Beta Pi (the engineering equivalent of Phi Beta Kappa) and was a Richard T. Beebe Scholar of Medicine; he has been on the clinical faculty at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, was a pediatrics instructor at Wake Medical Center (Raleigh), and has continued as Clinical Associate Professor of Family and Community Medicine at Duke University since 1982. He is a diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine as well as the American Board of Pediatrics; he is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Disability Evaluating Physicians.

In September 2003, Dr. Lapp was appointed by DHHS Secretary Tommy Thompson to serve on the CFS Advisory Committee. This committee meets in Washington quarterly to provide expert advice and recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services on a broad range of issues and topics pertaining to chronic fatigue syndrome.

Dr. Lapp is nationally recognized as a medical consultant to industry and the medical profession. He has written numerous articles on diverse subjects, and has spoken widely, especially concerning Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. He is active in both civic and professional activities, the state and county medical societies, as well as the American Medical Association and the Academy of Family Physicians. He is an active Rotarian, former president of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and as a Jaycee was nominated Outstanding Man of the Year in 1983. In 1985, the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Duke University voted him Clinical Professor of the Year. Dr. Lapp is a board member of the American Association for CFS and the American Fibromyalgia Syndrome Association, advisor to ProHealth Incorporated, medical advisor to the CFIDS Association of America and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council.

Dr. Klimas, a director of the laboratory, is board certified in internal medicine and diagnostic laboratory immunology. She is also the director of the Allergy and Immunology Clinic, and is a licensed laboratory director in Florida. Dr. Klimas is Director of Research for the Clinical AIDS/HIV Research at the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

A leader in the field of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) research, Dr. Klimas is the current President of the International Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Dr. Klimas is the principal investigator of the National Institute of Health's (NIH) Center for Multidisciplinary Studies of CFS Pathophysiology at the University of Miami. Dr. Klimas has been appointed to the inter-agency CFS Coordinating Committee, chaired by the Surgeon General of the United States. She is the founding editor of the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Recent publications include 123 peer reviewed papers, 3 books and 19 invited chapters.

Dr. Lowe holds B. A. and M.A. degrees in research-oriented general psychology from the University of West Florida. He also holds a B. S. degree in human biology and a doctorate in chiropractic from the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic, now the Southern California University of Health Sciences. He formerly taught psychology at the Miami Dade Community College and was a faculty member in the Clinical Sciences Division of the Texas Chiropractic College. Dr. John C. Lowe, a fibromyalgia, thyroid, and metabolism researcher, is a board certified pain management specialist.

As Director of Research for the Fibromyalgia Research Foundation, he has spearheaded the scientific study of two related subjects: the metabolic causes of fibromyalgia, and the relief of fibromyalgia symptoms through the treatment approach he developed and named "metabolic rehabilitation." He is author of the internationally acclaimed book, The Metabolic Treatment of Fibromyalgia, considered by many to be the most important document ever published on fibromyalgia. He has authored more than 140 articles, scientific papers, and book chapters. His writings have appeared in many of the top medical journals.

In 1980, one of Dr. Lowe's patients who had recovered from their fibromyalgia symptoms through his metabolic approach convinced him to established the Fibromyalgia Research Foundation (FRF). The three purposes of this 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization are to: (1) support scientific studies of the metabolic treatment of fibromyalgia patients; (2) determine the underlying molecular mechanisms of fibromyalgia; and (3) educate fibromyalgia patients, health care practitioners, researchers, and the general public about the findings of FRF-sponsored research.

Currently, Dr. Lowe and his multidisciplinary research team are studying the metabolic rates of fibromyalgia patients. In two studies that will soon be published, he and his colleagues found that fibromyalgia patients have abnormally low metabolic rates compared to healthy controls. Results of these studies vindicate Dr. Lowe's hypothesis that fibromyalgia patients are hypometabolic, and that the most likely mechanism is too little thyroid hormone regulation.

Dr. Natelson attended the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia for both his undergraduate and medical degrees. He then trained in neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. He received additional post-doctoral training in Behavioral Medicine (the science of how stress influences disease) at Cornell University's New York Hospital and at the Walter Reed Institute of Research in Washington DC. Thereafter he moved to New Jersey to UMDNJ where he advanced through the ranks to Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences.

Currently he holds the title of Emeritus Professor of Neurology and Neurosciences at UMDNJ and a new title of Professor of Neurology at at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, the medical school associated with BIMC.

The Pain & Fatigue Study Center, located at Suite 2R, 10 Union Square East, New York, NY 10003, provides an integrated approach to patient care and scientific research headed by Dr. Benjamin Natelson, M.D. The Center's integrated approach to clinical care and research is based on providing comprehensive treatment to those who experience medically unexplained pain and fatigue and continuing to do clinical research supported by the National Institutes of Health and by the pharmaceutical industry.

Dr. Peterson is physician in private practice in the state of Nevada, and has been described as a "pioneer" in the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). He graduated from the University of Rochester School of Medicine, Rochester, New York, in 1976 and was an intern and resident at the University of Utah Medical Center from 1976-1979. In 1979 he became a Diplomat of the American Board of Internal Medicine. He is president of Sierra Internal Medicine of Incline Village, established in 1981.

Along with Paul Cheney, Peterson was a treating physician at Incline Village during an outbreak of chronic fatigue syndrome that began in 1984 in the Lake Tahoe region. From 1984 to 1987, the illness was recorded in 259 patients in the area by the two physicians. The Lake Tahoe outbreak became the subject of several studies by Peterson and others. In 1995, Peterson and other investigators started conducting a 10-year follow-up study on patients seen during the outbreak. The study results were published in 2001 by the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the 2000 CFS documentary I Remember Me, Peterson was interviewed about some of his experiences during the Lake Tahoe outbreak.

In 1988, Peterson was the first physician to treat an extremely ill person diagnosed with CFS with the experimental drug Ampligen by obtaining compassionate-use permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Quantitative improvement in the first patient enabled the next pilot study of Ampligen in CFS patients by Peterson and other researchers. During the 1990 CFIDS Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, Peterson described positive results in 15 CFS patents after he treated them with Ampligen for approximately 6 months. In 1990 and 1991, Peterson was one of four principal investigators for the FDA approved phase II randomized placebo controlled double-blind study of the experimental intravenous drug Ampligen. The drug was administered in his Incline Village facility and three other sites. Peterson and others reported that there was statistically significant improvement in the patients receiving Ampligen. He is a principal investigator of the FDA-approved open-label safety and efficacy phase III drug study of Ampligen for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome. Hemispherx Biopharma's New Drug Application for marketing and sale of Ampligen to treat chronic fatigue syndrome was rejected in December 2009 because the FDA concluded that the two RCTs "did not provide credible evidence of efficacy."

Peterson was a member of the International Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study Group that coauthored the most widely used clinical and research description of CFS, called the 1994 CDC definition, and the Fukuda definition. He is a coauthor of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Clinical Working Case Definition, Diagnostic and Treatment Protocols, initiated by Health Canada and published by an international group of researchers in 2003.

Peterson, along with Annette and Harvey Whittemore, helped establish the Whittemore Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease at the University of Nevada in 2005 to aid patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and related illnesses.

In October 2009 Peterson was interviewed on National Public Radio about his views on chronic fatigue syndrome and the possible association with the retrovirus XMRV.

On September 22, 2011, Science published online a nine-lab study widely seen as the final blow to the theory, championed by Mikovits and colleagues in an October 2009 Science paper, that a recently detected mouse retrovirus might play a causal role in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). A letter in the same issue of Science from one of the contributing labs to the 2009 report revealed that a contamination had marred its contribution-PCR detection and sequencing of the mouse virus, dubbed XMRV. Mikovits and colleagues defended the validity of the rest of the study, known as Lombardi et al., which detected the virus by several other methods, so Science issued a rare partial retraction of the original paper. Mikovits was fired from Whittemore Peterson Institute on September 29, 2011.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, Dr. Podell is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and in Family Medicine. A Clinical Professor at New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Dr. Podell serves as co-host of the Willner's Window Health and Nutrition Show on New York City's WOR Radio (710 AM). Richard N. Podell, M.D., M.P.H., Medical Director and Clinical Professor, Department of Family Medicine, UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.

Dr. Podell is one of the nation's leading experts on the scientific integration of complementary and alternative therapies with conventional medicine. He also has special interest and expertise in clinical nutrition, behavioral medicine, and the diseases of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia.

The New Jersey Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Association presented Dr. Podell with their outstanding Achievement Award for the year 2002. Dr. Podell serves as Principal Investigator of a Food and Drug Administration approved Phase III clinical trial on the use of Ampligen, an investigational drug for the treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. He is a member of the expert panel on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the New Jersey State Department of Health and the New Jersey Academy of Medicine. He is a member of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Association, the International Myopain Society, the American College of Nutrition and the American Medical Association.

Dr. Podell has been an invited author for Fibromyalgia Network, a major patient-advocacy support group. Dr. Podell has served as one of the main preceptors for Robert Wood Johnson Medical School's required third year course on nutritional and holistic medicine. Dr. Podell has received teaching awards from the family practice residents at Overlook Hospital and from the medical student organization at New Jersey Medical School.

Dr. Podell is on the scientific advisory board of Healthnotes, one of the leading educational resources for the scientific evaluation of nutrition and herbal therapies. He was contributing editor for Nutrition Science News, and was the regular columnist on nutrition for the journal Postgraduate Medicine. Dr. Podell has published 45 peer-review journal articles, and patient education essays in Bottom Line Personal, Bottom Line Health, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Men's Health and other magazines. He has appeared as a medical expert on Good Morning America, the Today Show and CBS' Morning Show. Dr. Podell is an attending physician at Overlook Hospital, Summit, NJ.

Dr. Teitelbaum is a board certified internist and Medical Director of the national Fibromyalgia and Fatigue Centers, Inc. He is the author of the perennial best-seller From Fatigued to Fantastic!, which has sold over 500,000 copies. The 3rd revised edition from Avery/Penguin Group USA publishes on October 4, 2007.

In Pain Free 1-2-3 (McGraw-Hill, April 2006), Dr. Teitelbaum outlines a step-by-step program that can help anyone identify the source of pain and understand how to alleviate it. Three Steps to Happiness: Healing Through Joy (Deva Press 2003), provides a blueprint for creating and maintaining a natural state of happiness and vitality at any time.

Dr. Teitelbaum lectures to patient, physician and research groups internationally. He is the lead author of groundbreaking "gold standard" research on effective treatment for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia, which was published in the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, volume 8, number 2 in 2001.

In April 2002, he was editorialized in the Journal of the American Academy of Pain Management, where his integrative treatment protocol was recognized as "standard of practice" for chronic pain conditions.

His latest study published in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine focused on the effects of a unique 5-carbon sugar called D-ribose for Fibromyalgia patients. The research found that 2/3 of the patients studied showed improvement after only 12 days of therapy. The average increase in energy was 45 percent, with an average 30 percent improvement in well-being. Corvalen, a proprietary D-ribose product of Bioenergy Life Science, Inc., is designed to improve the metabolic health of hearts and muscles and is used to provide nutritional support to sufferers of Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS), and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Teitelbaum knows CFS/Fibromyalgia as an insider -- he contracted Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when he was in medical school and had to drop out for a year to recover. In the ensuing 25 years, he dedicated his career to finding effective treatment.

His web site (http://www.endfatigue.com) contains a sophisticated computer program, which can analyze and create a complete medical record of a patient's case to help patients and physicians determine the best course of treatment to get well.

Medical Training - University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, Residency Training - United Kingdom Fellowship Training - University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worchester, and University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria. Professor of Medicine and Rheumatology, Internal Medicine Residency Program. Director, sophomore musculoskeletal and connective tissue disease course; didactic Rheumatology seminar series for residents, bedside teaching during management and teaching rounds; M3 case reports, seminars on physical diagnosis in Rheumatology patients.

Author of over 130 articles and publications, Dr. Yunas has made significant contributions in describing, characterizing and defining fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), and remains active in the research of this condition. He is particularly interested in the enuroendocrine aspects of FMA and similar syndromes with chronic pain. He enjoys working in investigational study design and writing, including literary writing.