Comment on: Possible upregulation of hypothalamic 5-hydroxytryptamine receptors in patients with postviral fatigue syndrome. [BMJ. 1992]
EDITOR,-A M 0 Bakheit and colleagues report enhanced release of prolactin after administration of buspirone in patients with the postviral fatigue syndrome compared with controls and patients with depression. Their report would have been improved if they had described more fully the differences between the two groups of patients. As they point out, depression can be difficult to distinguish clinically from the postviral fatigue syndrome.
The authors used the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Edition, Revised to define depressive illness, but to qualify for this diagnosis a patient need complain of only four symptoms such as fatigue, hypersomnia, retardation, and loss of concentration in addition to depressed mood. The criteria they used for the postviral fatigue syndrome included depression, fatigue, reversed sleep pattern, and constipation alternating with diarrhoea. It would be surprising if there was not a substantial overlap between the two groups and if one of the main factors affecting diagnosis was not whether the patient presented first to a psychiatrist or a neurologist.
You can read the rest of this comment here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1882437/pdf/bmj00077-0052e.pdf
Source: Curtis D, Bullock T. Postviral fatigue syndrome. BMJ. 1992 Jun 13;304(6841):1566-7. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1882437/