Last month the British press made much of a study purporting to show that chronic fatigue syndrome was the single commonest cause of long term absence from school in Britain.1 The authors claimed to have calculated prevalence figures for both pupils (0.07%) and teachers (0.5%) similar to previously reported figures for the general population.2-4 Dowsett and Colby make much of “clusters” of cases, defined as three or more cases in a school. The press release distributed by one of the authors states that 39% of cases occurred in such clusters, saying that this “suggests that ME results from an infection.” It refers to one cluster extending over several schools in an area where there was “recreational water heavily polluted by sewage.” The published paper contains no reference to pollution by sewage or anything else, but only to several cases in “schools near two new towns in a rural environment alongside recreational water.”
You can read the full article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126833/pdf/9193280.pdf
Comment in:
Chronic fatigue syndrome in children. Journal was wrong to critizise study in schoolchildren. [BMJ. 1997]
Chronic fatigue syndrome in children. Patient organisations are denied a voice. [BMJ. 1997]
Comment on:
Randomised controlled trial of graded exercise in patients with the chronic fatigue syndrome. [BMJ. 1997]
Source: Marcovitch H. Managing chronic fatigue syndrome in children. BMJ. 1997 Jun 7;314(7095):1635-6. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2126833/pdf/9193280.pdf (Full article)