Archives of Disease in Childhood 2007;92:1058-1061
Leading articles
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Is chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME) heritable in children, and if so, why does it matter?
1 Centre for Child and Adolescent Health, Hampton House, Cotham Hill, Bristol, UK
2 MRC Centre for Causal Analyses in Translational Epidemiology (CaiTE), Department of Social Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK
Esther Crawley, Centre for Child and Adolescent Health, Hampton House, Cotham Hill, Bristol BS6 6JS, UK; Esther.crawley@bristol.ac.uk
Accepted 30 May 2007
We need a clear definition of CFS/ME in children and sample sizes for genetic studies need to be much larger
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Chronic fatigue syndrome or ME (CFS/ME) is surprisingly common in children with a prevalence of between 0.19% and 2% based on telephone surveys in the UK and the USA.1–3 Lifetime prevalence (up to 30 years old) of self-reported CFS/ME, uncorroborated by a physician, of 0.8% has been reported from the 1970 British Birth Cohort.4 Lifetime prevalences (age 8–17) of disabling fatigue of 3 months’ and 6 months’ duration of 2.34% and 1.29% have been reported from a longitudinal cohort of twins.5 This means that almost all paediatricians reading this article will have seen and managed children with CFS/ME. Some paediatricians will have noted a family history of CFS/ME and may have wondered whether this was due to genetic heritability or an environmental factor. The causes of CFS/ME have long been debated, which has not necessarily been helpful to the clinical management of children with CFS/ME.6–8 This article
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A brief digest of the December issue
Arch. Dis. Child. 2007 92: e12.[Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]
This article has been cited by other articles:
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Crawley, E, Sterne, J A C
(2009). Association between school absence and physical function in paediatric chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalopathy. Arch. Dis. Child.
94: 752-756
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