Sunday, August 30, 2009

Research Alert: University of Utah Fatigue Study

Text from a fellow blogger's website:
Individuals who have had severe, unexplained fatigue for at least six months and who have no serious abnormalities on medical tests are wanted for a study of chronic fatigue. Patients who qualify for the study will be asked to complete three questionnaires over a six month period. Participating in the study will not alter the treatment that your physician gives you. The purpose of the study is to evaluate whether patients treated by certain types of physicians improve faster than patients treated by other types of physicians. If you may be interested in participating in this study, please contact the study coordinator, Kathleen O’Connor at (801) 587-4741. For more information email kathleen.oconnor@hci.utah.edu or visit our website at https://hci-as2.hci.utah.edu/CFSurvey/app.
Thanks to cfswarrior for bringing this study to my attention!

Today's Activities: home & evening work commitment. Today's Most Annoying Symptoms: exhaustion, mild headache, active eczema on left and right underarms, sore lymph nodes in neck.

Mood (10 is best): 6
Energy (10 is best): 4
Physical Discomfort (10 is worst): 4

4 comments:

Joanne said...

Hi you may have seen my recent posts on other blogs so I will try and be brief.
I expect you have checked to see that your ME/CFS was not as a result of lyme Disease hopefully through a doctor who follows ILADS guidelines with all that has been going on over the review of IDSA guidelines most doctors are not well informed over lYme or the link with many ME/CFS patients.
Stephen Phillips presentation to IDSA review panel was concerning seronegativity and persistent infection

I was diagnosed with ME/CFS and then discovered it was Lyme Disease check out my story on bottom right on my blog and see the many links top right. Now after long term antibiotics I am nearly 100%
http://joanne-orangecottages.blogspot.com/

Good luck with finding something that works for you.

alyson said...

Hi Joanne,

Thanks for visiting my blog! Lyme Disease has been ruled out for me, but thank you for bringing it up as a possibility. I suppose that it is important to "leave no stone unturned" when it comes to ME/CFS. My ME/CFS was more likely triggered by the case of mono I came down with in college.

Sue Jackson said...

I'm always a little concerned with studies that don't differentiate between chronic fatigue and CFS. There could easily be people with undiagnosed anemia, thyroid problems or other conditions mixed in with people who truly have CFS. That could really skew the results. CFS by itself is heterogenous enough without throwing in people with fatigue from other sources.

Just my 2 cents...

Sue

alyson said...

Hi Sue,

I completely agree with you, yet I’m torn on the issue. I feel passionately that more research specifically on CFS/ME needs to be done. No question. Still, I do think there might be something to be learned from studying “unexplained fatigue” from different angles as long as the researchers are careful to exclude other obvious conditions (such as the ones you mentioned) that also cause fatigue. Maybe? Ugh. It's just so complicated...