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Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched

BACKGROUND: Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is understood as a complex condition, likely triggered and sustained by an interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. Little oversight exists of the field of causal research. This systematic scoping review explo...

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Autores principales: Muller, Ashley Elizabeth, Tveito, Kari, Bakken, Inger Johanne, Flottorp, Signe A., Mjaaland, Siri, Larun, Lillebeth
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7734915/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33317576
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02665-6
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author Muller, Ashley Elizabeth
Tveito, Kari
Bakken, Inger Johanne
Flottorp, Signe A.
Mjaaland, Siri
Larun, Lillebeth
author_facet Muller, Ashley Elizabeth
Tveito, Kari
Bakken, Inger Johanne
Flottorp, Signe A.
Mjaaland, Siri
Larun, Lillebeth
author_sort Muller, Ashley Elizabeth
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is understood as a complex condition, likely triggered and sustained by an interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. Little oversight exists of the field of causal research. This systematic scoping review explores potential causal factors of CFS/ME as researched by primary studies. METHODS: We searched eight databases for primary studies that examined potential causal factors of CFS/ME. Based on title/abstract review, two researchers independently sorted each study’s factors into nine main categories and 71 subordinate categories, using a system developed with input given during a 2018 ME conference, specialists and representatives from a ME patient advocacy group, and using BMJ Best Practice’s description of CFS/ME etiology. We also extracted data related to study design, size, diagnostic criteria and comparison groups. RESULTS: We included 1161 primary studies published between January 1979 and June 2019. Based on title/abstract analysis, no single causal factor dominated in these studies, and studies reported a mean of 2.73 factors. The four most common factors were: immunological (297 studies), psychological (243), infections (198), and neuroendocrinal (198). The most frequent study designs were case–control studies (894 studies) comparing CFS/ME patients with healthy participants. More than half of the studies (that reported study size in the title/abstract) included 100 or fewer participants. CONCLUSION: The field of causal hypotheses of CFS/ME is diverse, and we found that the studies examined all the main categories of possible factors that we had defined a priori. Most studies were not designed to adequately explore causality, rather to establish hypotheses. We need larger studies with stronger study designs to gain better knowledge of causal factors of CFS/ME.
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spelling pubmed-77349152020-12-14 Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched Muller, Ashley Elizabeth Tveito, Kari Bakken, Inger Johanne Flottorp, Signe A. Mjaaland, Siri Larun, Lillebeth J Transl Med Review BACKGROUND: Chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) is understood as a complex condition, likely triggered and sustained by an interplay of biological, psychological, and social factors. Little oversight exists of the field of causal research. This systematic scoping review explores potential causal factors of CFS/ME as researched by primary studies. METHODS: We searched eight databases for primary studies that examined potential causal factors of CFS/ME. Based on title/abstract review, two researchers independently sorted each study’s factors into nine main categories and 71 subordinate categories, using a system developed with input given during a 2018 ME conference, specialists and representatives from a ME patient advocacy group, and using BMJ Best Practice’s description of CFS/ME etiology. We also extracted data related to study design, size, diagnostic criteria and comparison groups. RESULTS: We included 1161 primary studies published between January 1979 and June 2019. Based on title/abstract analysis, no single causal factor dominated in these studies, and studies reported a mean of 2.73 factors. The four most common factors were: immunological (297 studies), psychological (243), infections (198), and neuroendocrinal (198). The most frequent study designs were case–control studies (894 studies) comparing CFS/ME patients with healthy participants. More than half of the studies (that reported study size in the title/abstract) included 100 or fewer participants. CONCLUSION: The field of causal hypotheses of CFS/ME is diverse, and we found that the studies examined all the main categories of possible factors that we had defined a priori. Most studies were not designed to adequately explore causality, rather to establish hypotheses. We need larger studies with stronger study designs to gain better knowledge of causal factors of CFS/ME. BioMed Central 2020-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7734915/ /pubmed/33317576 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02665-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. 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 in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Review
Muller, Ashley Elizabeth
Tveito, Kari
Bakken, Inger Johanne
Flottorp, Signe A.
Mjaaland, Siri
Larun, Lillebeth
Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title_full Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title_fullStr Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title_full_unstemmed Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title_short Potential causal factors of CFS/ME: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
title_sort potential causal factors of cfs/me: a concise and systematic scoping review of factors researched
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7734915/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33317576
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02665-6
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