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This biomarker seems incredibly general; I suspect people with certain presentations of a mitochondrial disease would have the same biomarker.

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Agreed, but it's still great to have evidence of a physical condition, as many CFS patients have been made to feel like crackpots at some point, and indeed some doctors use it as a convenient label for people they believe to be mentally ill.

Of course, this also raises a question about how those with mental illness are often treated.

To be fair, if someone is overly anxious and neurotic about minor physical symptoms, to the point that the anxiety is making things worse, often the best thing a doctor can do is reassure them that they are fine, to stop worrying, and send them home. Taking those patients' physical symptoms too seriously may be the worst thing to do. I can see that it must be hard for doctors, especially if they only really have about 12 minutes to make a determination...

Hypochondriasis is real, sure.

But I'm not talking about cases like that, I'm talking about patients behaving perfectly rationally, but insistently.

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