Biobehavioral examination of fatigue across populations: Report from a P30 Center of Excellence

Abstract

Objectives This paper reports the cross-studies analysis of projects from the P30 Center of Excellence for Biobehavioral Approaches to Symptom Management. Although the projects investigated diverse populations, a consistent theoretical and empirical approach guided each project. Methods Common data elements included measures of psychobehavioral variables: the PROMIS Shortform fatigue scale, the Center of Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). Plasma cytokines were measured as the shared biological data element. Results Data were analyzed from 295 participants with fibromyalgia (N=72), second trimester pregnancy (N=73), sickle cell anemia (N=60), and cardiometabolic risk (N=91). The mean age of participants was 35.4 years and most participants were female. Levels of symptoms were generally elevated across samples: the level of fatigue ranged from 18.9 to 24.7, depressive symptoms from 12.5–23.4 and perceived stress from 16.5–21.8. Inter-correlations among symptom measures and perceived stress were strong across the samples. However, correlations among psychobehavioral variables and cytokines were variable, indicating a separate relationship for the measures with cytokines. Conclusion Future work in symptom science could benefit from common data elements, including biomarkers, across populations to better develop the taxonomy of symptom profiles across conditions.

Psychometric Evaluation of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Fatigue-Short Form Across Diverse Populations

“…Sample sizes ranged from 40 to 72. A comparison of levels of fatigue, depressive symptoms, and stress, as well as the full demographic profile across the four clinical samples can be found in a report published by Lyon et al (2014); a snapshot is presented in Table 1. The Institutional Review Board approved protocols for each of the studies.…”

The effect of fatigue on self-perceived health in patients with hemoglobinopathies in a greek representative sample

“…This was one of the first studies exploring the symptom of fatigue in regard to HRQoL in thalassemia major patients, since until now most of the published research concerns fatigue in patients with sickle cell disease. [13][14][15][16] Only in one study fatigue was measured as a symptom of fibromyalgia in patients with thalassemia minor using 40 patients where they detected an increased prevalence of fatigue in those patients. 16 Our results reveal that in the majority of patients (almost 80%) with…”

“…Thalassemia major and minor, under transfusion treatment are suffering from fatigue. This is a very interesting finding since until now fatigue was mainly found in with patients with iron deficiency anemia 17.18 and sickle cell anemia [13][14][15][16] but had not been explored in Thalassemia patients, since in the one study that fatigue was examined as a symptom, it was connected with pain and reduced quality of life and not as a unique symptom. 13 In relation to the frequency with which participants experienced fatigue, almost half of the sample reported that they experienced fatigue a few times over a month's period and one quarter of the patients reported that they were experiencing fatigue often during the…”

An Overview of the Patient‐Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) for Assessing Chronic Low Back Pain Patients

“…The fatigue module is significantly correlated with the Modified Fatigue Impact Scale (Senders et al., ), and a crosswalk measure was created to be able to interpret old data in the framework of the PROMIS (Noonan et al., ). Those with fibromyalgia, second trimester pregnancy, sickle cell anemia, and cardiometabolic risk had elevated levels of fatigue using the eight‐item version of the PROMIS fatigue domain (Lyon et al., ), as did former Division I collegiate athletes (Simon & Docherty, ) and breast cancer survivors, using the full fatigue domain (Rogers et al., ). A newly created fatigue module specifically designed for multiple sclerosis patients (PROMIS‐Fatigue MS ) correlated well with the eight‐item version (Cook et al., ).…”