Comment on: Acute effects of thirty minutes of light-intensity, intermittent exercise on patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. [Phys Ther. 1999]
We were interested to read in the report by Clapp et al (August 1999) that 30 minutes of intermittent walking did not exacerbate symptoms or cause any abnormal physiological response to exercise in subjects with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Clapp and colleagues go on to suggest that “some individuals with CFS may be able to use low-level, intermittent exercise without exacerbating their symptoms.” They also write that “there are no data suggesting that exercises are effective as a primary treatment for patients with CFS.”
These authors do not go far enough in their recommendation and are quite wrong in their assumption regarding exercise as a primary treatment. Our group has published a randomized controlled trial showing that graded aerobic exercise therapy, properly supervised, is a significantly more effective treatment than the same amount of therapist input using only stretching and relaxation exercises.
This study showed that 52 % of patients rated themselves as “much” or “very much” better after 3 months of treatment, analyzed by intention to treat, compared with 27% of those treated with a control treatment. At the 1-year follow-up, the proportion of those who rated themselves as “much” better increased to 63% by intention-to-treat analysis (74% by completed patients’ analysis). Only 1 patient out of 33 patients rated himself “worse” after treatment, the same proportion as in the control treatment. Four patients dropped out of exercise therapy, and 3 patients dropped out of the control treatment. We excluded patients with a comorbid psychiatric disorder. We concluded that “these findings support the use of appropriate prescribed graded aerobic exercise in the management of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome.”
You can read the rest of this comment here: http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/80/1/115.long
Source: White P, Fulcher K. Benefits of exercise therapy. Phys Ther. 2000 Jan;80(1):115. http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/80/1/115.long