Article Index

by Lucy Dechene, Ph.D.

 

[Note: For help understanding some of the statistics in this paper, see Research Notes about statistics used in medical studies]

Does the character of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) change over time? Published results from the 10+ Long-term Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Study indicate that the illness becomes more neurological after fifteen years or more.

Fred Friedberg, Ph.D of the SUNY Stony Brook Medical School, Maggie McKenzie of the Connecticut CFIDS Association, Robert Fontanetta of Floral Park, NY and myself (of the Fitchburg State College Mathematics Department and MassCFIDS) reported this fact in another of our series of papers on the 10+ study of patients ill with ME/CFS for more than 10 years.1

Since we were forced by reviewers to eliminate some important information from our paper, I will include more information in this article than occurred in print. For instance, another major result was that long-term ME/CFS patients who are gradually improving, were significantly more severely ill during their first year of illness than the others in the sample.

There are some other significant results concerning the unusual fatigue characteristics section on the questionnaire which I will omit here, since they will be published in a paper still under revision and peer review. 2