Clinical Profile and Aspects of Differential Diagnosis in Patients with ME/CFS from Latvia

Abstract

Background and objectives: There is still an uncertainty regarding the clinical symptomatology and the diagnostic criteria in terms of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), as different diagnostic criteria exist. Our aim is to identify the core symptoms of ME/CFS in the outpatient setting in Riga; to distinguish symptoms in patients with ME/CFS and those with symptoms of fatigue; and to investigate patient thoughts on the onset, symptoms, treatment and effect of ME/CFS. Materials and methods: Total of 65 Caucasian patients from an ambulatory care setting were included in the study. Questionnaires, specialist evaluation of the patients and visual analogue scale (VAS) measurements were used to objectify the findings. Results: The study showed that ME/CFS with comorbidities is associated with a more severe disease. A negative correlation was found regarding an increase in age and number of current symptoms, as well as an increase in VAS score and the duration of fatigue and age in the ME/CFS without comorbidities group. Conclusions: Comorbidities tend to present with a more severe course of ME/CFS. Fatigue, myalgia, arthralgia and sleep disturbances tend to be more prevalent in the ME/CFS patients compared to the non-ME/CFS patients. VAS score has a tendency to decrease with age and duration of fatigue. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are the most commonly used pharmacological drug class that reduces ME/CFS symptoms.

BioMapAI: Artificial Intelligence Multi-Omics Modeling of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

“…Constructed to automatically adapt to any input matrix X and any output matrix Y = [ y 1 , y 2 , …, y m ], BioMapAI defaults to parallelly align specific layers for each output, y . Currently, the model treated all 12 studied symptoms, [ y 1 , y 2 , …, y 12 ], with equal importance due to the unclear symptom prioritization in ME/CFS 85 . We computed modules to assign different weights to symptoms to enhance diagnostic accuracy.…”

Welche medizinische Fachdisziplinen werden von ME/CFS-Erkrankten aufgesucht? Eine Public-Health-Studie zur Notwendigkeit einer besseren ärztlichen Aus- und Fortbildung

“…physischen und psychischen Kraft-und Energielosigkeit und einer rapiden Verschlechterung des Allgemeinzustands einher. Hinzu kommen neurokognitive Symptome, meist ausgeprägte Schlafstörungen und variierende neuroimmunologische Regulationsstörungen [10]. Etwa ein Viertel der ME/CFS-Erkrankten ist aufgrund der Schwere der Krankheit an das Haus gebunden, mehr als 60 % sind arbeitsunfähig [11].…”

The Advantages of an Integrative Approach in the Primary Healthcare of Post-COVID-19 and ME/CFS Patients

“…Considering the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) ME/CFS demonstrates a significant negative impact on general health, physical functioning, emotional health, vitality, cognitive health, and well-being, in different populations [12,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. Various tools are used to elaborate the HRQoL, such as EuroQoL-5 Dimensions (EQ-5D-3L) [26,31] and (EQ-5D-5L) [12], 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36) [29,31], Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory (PedsQL) [28], overall health status reported on a Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) [12,27,30], Abbreviated World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) [32], completed by people with ME/CFS, and Family Reported Outcome Measure (FROM-16) questionnaire [30,32], completed by family members. Simultaneously, HRQol widely affected by all post-COVID-19 domains [24] mostly is assessed by EuroQoL-5 Dimension EQ-5D-5L and VAS [33][34][35].…”