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Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates
BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of functional somatic syndromes (FSS) requires 1) presence of somatic symptoms, and 2) absence of medical conditions potentially accounting for these symptoms. Due to the limited feasibility of medical examinations, epidemiological research on FSS has neglected to assess th...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4286915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25280494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1034 |
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author | Fischer, Susanne Nater, Urs M |
author_facet | Fischer, Susanne Nater, Urs M |
author_sort | Fischer, Susanne |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of functional somatic syndromes (FSS) requires 1) presence of somatic symptoms, and 2) absence of medical conditions potentially accounting for these symptoms. Due to the limited feasibility of medical examinations, epidemiological research on FSS has neglected to assess the second criterion. Our objective was therefore to evaluate the implications of considering information on exclusionary medical conditions in epidemiological research on FSS. METHODS: A survey among 3’054 students was conducted. We compared prevalence rates and overlap of 17 FSS obtained by: 1) a symptom-based strategy and 2) a symptom-and-exclusion-based strategy including information on exclusionary medical conditions. RESULTS: The symptom-and-exclusion-based strategy led to a marked decrease in prevalence rates compared to the symptom-based strategy. Furthermore, it resulted in fewer individuals who were affected by multiple FSS. CONCLUSIONS: Adding self-reported information on exclusionary medical conditions leads to a significant decrease in the prevalence and overlap of FSS. More rigorous approaches to studying FSS should be adopted. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4286915 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42869152015-01-09 Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates Fischer, Susanne Nater, Urs M BMC Public Health Research Article BACKGROUND: The diagnosis of functional somatic syndromes (FSS) requires 1) presence of somatic symptoms, and 2) absence of medical conditions potentially accounting for these symptoms. Due to the limited feasibility of medical examinations, epidemiological research on FSS has neglected to assess the second criterion. Our objective was therefore to evaluate the implications of considering information on exclusionary medical conditions in epidemiological research on FSS. METHODS: A survey among 3’054 students was conducted. We compared prevalence rates and overlap of 17 FSS obtained by: 1) a symptom-based strategy and 2) a symptom-and-exclusion-based strategy including information on exclusionary medical conditions. RESULTS: The symptom-and-exclusion-based strategy led to a marked decrease in prevalence rates compared to the symptom-based strategy. Furthermore, it resulted in fewer individuals who were affected by multiple FSS. CONCLUSIONS: Adding self-reported information on exclusionary medical conditions leads to a significant decrease in the prevalence and overlap of FSS. More rigorous approaches to studying FSS should be adopted. BioMed Central 2014-10-04 /pmc/articles/PMC4286915/ /pubmed/25280494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1034 Text en © Fischer and Nater; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014 This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Fischer, Susanne Nater, Urs M Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title | Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title_full | Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title_fullStr | Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title_full_unstemmed | Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title_short | Functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
title_sort | functional somatic syndromes: asking about exclusionary medical conditions results in decreased prevalence and overlap rates |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4286915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25280494 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-14-1034 |
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