Tag: Icelandic disease

Anxiety disorders: a result of long-term chronic fatigue–the psychiatric characteristics of the sufferers of Iceland disease

Abstract:

OBJECTIVE: In order to clarify the lifetime likelihood of developing psychiatric disorder following the Akureyri disease, we have investigated 55 well documented cases of the Akureyri disease.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: All participants were interviewed and diagnosed as to psychiatric disorders according to DSM-III.

RESULTS: Of the 55 subjects included in this analysis 53 were women. The mean age of the participants was 67.7 years. The most common problem was agoraphobia with panic attacks 12.7% (P < 0.0001); agoraphobia without panic attacks 21.8% (P < 0.0001); social phobia 14.5% (P < 0.001); simple phobia 18.1% (P < 0.05); schizophrenia 3.6% (P < 0.01); and alcohol dependence 5.4% (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION: Prolonged chronic fatigue most commonly results in anxiety disorders. Following the infection, the more serious psychiatric disorders do not seem to play a major role in the long run.

 

Source: Líndal E, Bergmann S, Thorlacius S, Stefánsson JG. Anxiety disorders: a result of long-term chronic fatigue–the psychiatric characteristics of the sufferers of Iceland disease. Acta Neurol Scand. 1997 Sep;96(3):158-62. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9300068

 

Chronic fatigue syndrome. ME Association is honest about prognosis

Comment on: Chronic fatigue syndrome: prevalence and outcome. [BMJ. 1994]

 

Editor,-I wish to challenge the assertion by S M Lawrie and A J Pelosi that the prognosis given by some myalgic encephalomyelitis associations is nihilistic. In fact, the figures currently used by the ME Association are in line with the data on chronicity and disability found in various follow up studies of patients, including those of the epidemics of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.

The chronicity of myalgic encephalomyelitis was documented as long ago as 1956 when Sigurdsson and Gudmundsson reported that, of 39 patients involved in the 1948 Icelandic epidemic, only five (1/3%) had recovered completely. Thirty two years later a re-examination of 10 Icelandic patients by Hyde and Bergmann showed that the recovery rate was no more than 20% (two of the 10).

You can read the rest of this comment here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2540204/pdf/bmj00440-0055d.pdf

 

Source: Howes S. Chronic fatigue syndrome. ME Association is honest about prognosis. BMJ. 1994 May 14;308(6939):1299-300. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2540204/