Comment on: Possible upregulation of hypothalamic 5-hydroxytryptamine receptors in patients with postviral fatigue syndrome. [BMJ. 1992]
EDITOR,-A M 0 Bakheit and colleagues suggest that the buspirone challenge test may be useful in distinguishing between a “primary depressive illness” and the postviral fatigue syndrome. It is difficult to assess the truth of this from the data presented in their paper. To know the usefulness of this test the numbers of controls and patients scored above or below an appropriately chosen cut off point of serum prolactin concentration needs to be known. Unfortunately, the authors present the prolactin concentrations as mean values. If the aim of the test is to exclude major depression then a cut off which produces few false negative results should be chosen. Were the high mean values in the postviral fatigue group due to one or two extreme outliers? It is noteworthy that the standard deviations in the patients were much higher in the controls at baseline assessment. Why was this?
You can read the rest of this comment here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1882426/pdf/bmj00077-0052c.pdf
Source: Hatcher S. Postviral fatigue syndrome. BMJ. 1992 Jun 13;304(6841):1566; author reply 1567. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1882426/