Mears, Cynthia J, Taylor, Renee R, Jordan, Karen M et al. · The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2004 · DOI
This study looked at how common fatigue lasting more than one month is in teenagers visiting primary care clinics. Researchers found that about 8% of teens had prolonged fatigue and 4.4% had symptoms matching CFS-like illness. Teens with prolonged fatigue were more likely to also experience headaches, muscle pain, fever, and fatigue that worsened with exercise.
This study provides early epidemiological evidence that ME/CFS-like illness affects a meaningful proportion of adolescents in routine primary care settings. The identification of post-exertional fatigue as a key correlate aligns with contemporary understanding of ME/CFS pathophysiology and suggests clinicians should screen for this symptom pattern in fatigued adolescent patients.
This study cannot establish causation or the underlying mechanisms of prolonged fatigue and CFS-like illness—it only describes associations. The CFS-like case definition was author-created and may not align with formal diagnostic criteria (e.g., Fukuda definition), limiting comparability to other studies. Cross-sectional design means temporal relationships cannot be determined.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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