Article Medically Reviewed By:
Terri Lupton, RN, BSS
Coordinator for Educational Opportunities The CFIDS Association of America, Inc. Charlotte, NC
Overview
What Is It?
Chronic fatigue syndrome is an illness characterized by prolonged, debilitating fatigue severe enough to affect one or more aspects of a person's life. It is also characterized by multiple nonspecific symptoms such as headaches, recurrent sore throats, muscle and joint pains, memory and concentration difficulties.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is an illness characterized by prolonged, debilitating fatigue that does not improve with rest and may get worse with physical or mental activity. It is also characterized by multiple nonspecific symptoms such as headaches, recurrent sore throats, muscle and joint pains, memory and concentration difficulties.
Profound fatigue, the hallmark of the disorder, can come on suddenly or gradually and persists or recurs throughout the period of illness. Unlike the short-term disability of an illness such as the flu, CFS symptoms linger for at least six months and often for years. The cause of CFS remains unknown.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that CFS affects women at four times the rate that it affects men and that the condition is most common in people in their 40s and 50s. Chronic fatigue syndrome can affect any sex, race or socioeconomic class. And although CFS is much less common in children than in adults, children can develop the illness, particularly during the teen years. It can be as disabling as multiple sclerosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
The prevalence of CFS is difficult to measure because the illness can be difficult to diagnose, but, in general, it is estimated that about one to four million people in the United States have a CFS-like condition, according to the CDC. People with CFS are seriously impaired; at least a quarter are unemployed or on disability because of their illness, yet only about half have seen a physician about the condition.
Chronic fatigue syndrome does not appear to be a new illness, although it has only recently been assigned its name. Relatively small outbreaks of similar disorders have been described in medical literature since the 1930s. Furthermore, case reports of comparable illnesses date back several centuries.
Interest in what now is called CFS was renewed in the mid-1980s after several studies found slightly higher levels of antibodies to the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in people with CFS-like symptoms than in healthy individuals. Most of these people had experienced an episode of infectious mononucleosis (sometimes called mono or the "kissing disease") a few years before they began to experience the chronic, incapacitating symptoms of CFS. As a result, for a time, the CFS-like illness became popularly termed "chronic EBV."
Further investigation revealed that elevated EBV antibodies were not indicative of CFS, since healthy...
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