I think Patterson's thesis is probably wrong. I know it's an easy and general culprit but as someone who has greatly struggled with CFS for almost two decades, I think it's a disease of the microbiome, not just in the colon but along the entire gastrointestinal tract. My guess is that post-viral syndromes could have the same basic cause. I did Bruce's testing and the results showed that wasn't a candidate for his treatment even I share many symptoms of my CFS with long-haulers.

My symptoms are easily modulated with probiotics, antimicrobial herbs, blood pressure drugs that affect the microbiome, and the antibiotic rifaximin and the antiparasitic nitazoxanide. The problem is that beneficial modulations don't last and the same substance can cause different symptoms at different times. And theses strong changes can happen immediately after I swallow something, so it's not just the bulk of the microbes in the large intestine that need to be renormalized but everything from the mouth on down.

It's an extremely, extremely complicated system to try to repair and until we have highly personalized medicine or perhaps some way to enable the immune system to turn back the clock (could leronlimab work to some extent?), I think a truly effective treatment will evade us.