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| |  Mental Impairment And Functional Incapacity Linked In Chronic Fatigue LONDON, ENGLAND -- April 9, 1998 -- The degree of functional incapacity resulting from chronic fatigue syndrome parallels the level of cognitive impairment, finds a study in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry. Furthermore, psychiatric factors do not explain these findings. Researchers assessed the mental and physical capacities of 53 patients with the syndrome and 32 healthy people who did not exercise regularly, using questionnaires and a battery of standardised neuropsychological tasks. The tasks focused on verbal and visual memory as well as attention and concentration. The results showed that patients with higher numbers of failed scores reported significantly more days of inactivity in the previous month than those with fewer failed scores. Patients with failing verbal memory scores were particularly functionally disabled compared with those who passed this test. The significance of the association was not simply a consequence of psychiatric factors -- anxiety, panic and phobias -- and depression, the results showed. There was absolutely no evidence to suggest that the cognitive impairments caused the functional disability. The link between the neuropsychological deficits and the functional impairment in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome is similar to findings in patients with HIV, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease and stroke, explained the authors.
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