Gill AC, Dosen A, Ziegler JB: Chronic fatigue syndrome in adolescents. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2004;158(3):225-229.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a condition of severe, debilitating fatigue, sore throat, headache, lymphadenopathy, arthralgia, and myalgia usually associated with adults. There are no CFS diagnostic criteria for children or adolescents, but there is a suspected prevalence of CFS in 5.5 per 100,000 in ages 0 through 9 years and 47.9 per 100,000 in ages 10 through 19 years in Australia.
There is little data on the long-term outcomes of these children. The study obtained follow-up data on thirty-four subjects administering a telephone questionnaire at a mean of 4.57 years following the initial diagnosis.
Almost half (44%) of the group showed no improvement in the symptoms up to 8 years following diagnosis. Improvement of symptoms seemed to be associated with symptoms that had lasted less than 6 months from diagnosis regardless of intervention. Early hospitalization does not seem to improve outcome, but ongoing individualized treatment and management of academic and recreational activities, sleep regulation, psychosocial, educational, and pharmacological support may provide improvement.