Rethinking childhood adversity in chronic fatigue syndrome
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Neurology
- Keywords
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, major Depressive Disorder, Early Adversity, Childhood Trauma, Bayesian Statistics
- Copyright
- © 2015 Clark et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Rethinking childhood adversity in chronic fatigue syndrome. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1571v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1571v1
Abstract
Objectives: Previous studies have consistently shown increased rates of childhood adversity in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). However, such aetiopathogenic studies of CFS are potentially confounded by co-morbidity and misdiagnosis particularly with depression. We used a modelling approach with existing data and data generated in our examination of the rates of childhood adversity in a sample of CFS patients who had no lifetime history of depression. Methods: The childhood trauma questionnaire (CTQ) was completed by a sample of 52 participants and 19 controls with chronic fatigue syndrome who did not meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder (confirmed using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV). Subsequently, Mediation Analysis (Baye’s Rules) was used to establish the risk childhood adversity poses for CFS with and without depression. Results: In a cohort of CFS patients with depression robustly excluded, CTQ scores were markedly lower than in all previous studies and, in contrast to these previous studies, not increased compared with healthy controls. Post-hoc analysis showed that CTQ scores correlated with the number of depressive symptoms during the lifetime worst period of low mood. The probability of developing CFS given a history of childhood trauma was shown to be 4%, a two-fold increased risk compared to the general population. However, much of this risk is mediated by the concomitant development of major depression. Discussion: The data suggests that previous studies showing a relationship between childhood adversity and CFS may be mediated by depression
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.
Supplemental Information
Data File
Data file with columns for ID, group, CTQ responses, followed by CTQ subscale scores, then a column (AX) showing whether the participant reported abuse of at least moderate severity in any domain, then two columns showing the number of depression SCID questions coded as threshold (AY) or threshold plus definite (AZ) then sex and age. Beyond BB are the calculations for the number in each group by sex and their mean ages. With additional calculations of number of patients per CTQ category and a copy of the thresholds used.