ArticlesDefining the Occurrence and Influence of Alpha-Delta Sleep in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
Section snippets
Recruitment of CFS Patients
Study subjects were recruited from the outpatient fatigue clinic, Vrije Universiteit Brussels between October and February 2003. Generally, patients are referred by their general practitioner to the outpatient fatigue clinic. To fulfill the 1994 CDC criteria for CFS, clinically evaluated, unexplained, persistent, or relapsing chronic fatigue that is of new or definite onset should result in a substantial reduction in previous levels of occupational, educational, social, or personal activities.2
Subjects
Forty-eight patients were included in this study, of which 19 were male (40%) and 29 were female (60%). The mean age of the patients was 45 years (±10.46 years). The mean number of years the patients experienced symptoms was 8.98 (±7.71 years). The mean scores on the immune parameters are presented in Table 2. None of the immune variables fell outside their reference score.
Rnase L
The mean RNase L was 4.47 (±0.71) with a median of 2.80. The deregulation of the RNase L pathway can be quantified by
Discussion
Sleep architecture variables demonstrated significantly different sleep onset latency and sleep disturbances in CFS patients (Table 4). Because of the resemblance between the CFS patients used by Fischler et al13 and Fossey et al15 and our CFS population, their results may apply to our sample, although no healthy control group was used. Similar results were already reported by several other authors, such as Whelton et al10 and Stough and Withers.14 CFS patients present less sleep continuity.
Acknowledgments
Our Department would like to thank Kim Borremans in collecting the appropriate data and Nancy Reichenbach for her help in academic writing.
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