Follow-up study of adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome.(What's New in Research)(Clinical report)

In a study of adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) receiving regular care, Stefan M. van Geelan and colleagues found that only half of their 54 subjects had recovered from CFS at 2-year follow-up. Factors linked with nonrecovery included pain, poor mental health, low self-esteem, and general negative health perception.

This is the largest and the only prospective follow-up study to examine outcomes with regular care for adolescent CFS. The authors cite five previous follow-up studies of regular care in which the average recovery rate was around 30%. The authors suggest that such low recovery rates--despite intensive healthcare use--points to an acute need for …