Up to the present day there has been no other longitudinal study of severely affected patients.

About CHROME

CHROME was established in 1994 to attempt to characterise and quantify the housebound ME population because at that time there had been no epidemiological studies of the population severely affected by ME.

The major motivations were:

• the absence of other studies,
  
• the apparent high level of ignorance and lack of understanding of ME within many parts of the medical profession and
  
• the very poor level of care, treatment and even acceptance experienced by those who were severely affected by ME, who had the greatest need for considerate care.

In 2006, CHROME and PRIME joined forces to bring the CHROME dataset to the web in a searchable form.  This work is progressing alongside the PRIME work on diaries for people with ME/CFS.

We hope that the CHROME data will enable professionals, researchers and patients develop a greater understanding of how the severest forms of this disease affect people.