Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Pregnancy, and Addison Disease

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Implications for Women and their Health Care Providers During the Childbearing Years

“…Schacterle and Komaroff found that developmental delays were reported more often in offspring of women who became pregnant after as compared to before the onset of CFS 1 . The hypocortisolism that occurs with CFS and the role of maternal cortisol secretion in fetal growth and development has been hypothesized as an explanation for this increased rate of developmental delays, 50 although Schacterle and Komaroff are careful to note that their finding needs validation by larger, prospective studies with control populations 1 …”

<<Oui>> a l'independance editoriale, <<non>> a l'ingerence politique

“…The importance of this assessment is especially evident in light of the virtually complete recovery of patients with chronic fatigue who are treated with low-dose hydrocortisone. 6 Another rationale for assessing cortisol production in patients with chronic fatigue is the fact that this condition shares 43 clinical features with Addison's disease, 7,8 including hypocortisolism, chronic fatigue, and all of the symptoms listed in the diagnostic criteria for chronic fatigue. 7 This impressive clinical overlap between 2 distinctly named diseases suggests that in practical terms, chronic fatigue should be regarded as a mild form of Addison's disease.…”

Chronic fatigue syndrome, exercise, cortisol and lymphadenopathy

“…Unfortunately, because of the misleading coexistence of quite different diagnostic criteria for CFS [1], it is difficult to predict the patients with CFS who are more likely to have hypocortisolism and which would worsen with exercise. However, it is arguable that the presence or absence of lymphadenopathy [8], which is a sign of hypocortisolism [6, 9] and is one of the 43 clinical features that CFS shares with Addison's disease [10–12], could reliably discriminate CFS patients who may worsen with exercise from those who may improve with it. Indeed, lymphadenopathy, unlike other symptoms of CFS [11, 12], many of which are non‐specific and can also be found in depression and other affective disorders [11, 12], is far from being common in physical diseases and is absent in psychiatric conditions.…”