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Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of, and finding treatments for, complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.
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RESULTS: The results indicate a striking lack of statistical significant differences between the CFS sample and the Flemish control group at the level of dimensional Trait scores, number of criteria, and prevalence rates of personality disorder diagnoses.
However the personality trait assessments were formulated for and normed in healthy persons. If you go around asking an ill person questions about whether is is concerned about not fitting in, and questions about whether others do more for them than they do for others, or whether they need to have specific routines or diets (or have a hard time with changes; I can't recall how the questions for OCD are worded)... it's entirely possible that what you are in fact measuring is the presence of illness and disability, not personality traits. (this is why the control group should be an illness group which is also debilitating, etc. Having a poorly understood illness could also contribute to such artifacts)
MZ twins =Monozygotic twins = "identical twins"Emotional Instability
Figure 2 presents the MZ and DZ within-twin pair associations of emotional instability with both definitions of chronic fatigue. Although the MZ within-twin pair associations with both definitions of fatigue were not reliably different from zero (B’s for both definitions<−0.004, p’s>0.70), the DZ within-twin pair associations were significant (B=0.086, p=0.003 for chronic fatigue of 6 months or longer; B=0.100, p=0.001 for CFS-like illness). This finding suggests that the association between emotional instability and both definitions of chronic fatigue is almost completely confounded by common genetic mechanisms, regardless of the stringency of diagnostic criteria.
In contrast to our results on emotional instability, our finding of an association between low extraversion and both definitions of chronic fatigue differed from those of Kato and colleagues [22], who found no such association. Our finding suggests that this association is not driven by familial factors. The lack of familial confounding in our data is consistent with the possibility that low extraversion and chronic fatigue have causal dynamics [37]. However, these findings do not allow us to determine whether low extraversion predisposes a person to develop a fatiguing illness or whether having a disabling illness such as CFS pushes a person down the extraversion scale over time in the direction of greater introversion, which can then amplify and maintain the condition. Nevertheless, our finding of a potentially causal association, combined with Kato and colleagues’ finding that preexisting introversion did not increase the risk for subsequent development of fatiguing illness, suggests that introversion is likely to be the result of CFS rather than the cause. Prospective studies are needed to clarify the robustness of this association and the direction of causality.
Even with these mixed results, extraversion is a potentially important factor in understanding how CFS develops and is sustained in individuals because extraversion correlates with subjective well-being [29–32] and guiding a person to act in a more extraverted manner can increase subjective well-being [33]. Such an effect, along with the positive effects of extraversion on exercise behavior [24–26], may explain some of the benefits of cognitive behavioral and graded exercise therapies in CFS [34–36]. That is, acting in an extraverted way may have a “navigational effect” that positively alters the daily experience of fatigue, pain, and associated negative mood states described by people with CFS.
The slight attenuation of the effect in MZ compared to DZ pairs suggests that the association between low extraversion and both definitions of chronic fatigue may be somewhat confounded by familial factors. Nevertheless, the strong association that remained in the MZ pairs, even when controlling for shared genetics, is consistent with the hypothesis that, to an important degree, extraversion affects fatigue, fatigue affects extraversion, and the relationship may be mutually reinforcing, regardless of the initial direction of causation.
Again, is one interested in "subjective well-being" or actually treating the illness? Making people more extraverted might mean they don't self-report as ill, but that's not dealing with the core illness.These results may have important implications for clinical interventions for people with CFS. Considerable evidence suggests that extraverted individuals tend to achieve greater levels of subjective well-being than introverted individuals [30, 31]. Self-reports and spousal reports of dispositional extraversion and overall positive affect have shown reasonably robust correlations that vary in the range of 0.10 to 0.70 [29, 32] across various ages and cultures [46]. Evidence also indicates that guiding introverted people toward acting as if they were extraverted can increase subjective well-being [33]. That is, positive affect tends to follow on what individuals do regardless of what traits they have or who they are [33, 47]. Therefore, this navigational effect of “doing” may positively alter a person’s daily experience of fatigue and well-being. Clinically, therapeutic efforts can capitalize on this effect to reverse the slide toward greater introversion in everyday life —an outcome to which individuals with CFS may be prone. Consistent with this approach, several randomized clinical trials have demonstrated that cognitive–behavioral and graded exercise interventions that focus on increasing social and physical activity are efficacious in lowering fatigue and improving physical function in people with CFS [36, 48–54]. In addition, higher extraversion has also been shown to predict positive response to both antidepressant medication and cognitive– behavioral interventions [34, 35].
I'm pretty sure extraversion hasn't been measured before and after CBT or GET in CFS, so what they are saying is all very speculative, particularly for a concluding paragraph. Similarly, going the other way, there are no specific studies mentioned showing that any intervention that caused people with CFS to be more extraverted, improved scores.In conclusion, we found that higher emotional instability and lower extraversion were linked to chronic fatigue, such that emotional instability acted through shared genetic mechanisms and extraversion acted primarily through a bidirectional, causal pathway. Behavioral prevention and intervention strategies can be used to mitigate or reverse the development and maintenance of CFS and other fatiguing illness. Taking an extraverted approach in day-to-day interactions may have a “navigational” effect that lowers morbidity and improves subjective well-being and functioning in people who suffer from chronic fatigue.
They've produced no evidence that it was bidirectional. All they found was a correlation/association between the two.Whereas emotional instability and chronic fatigue are linked by shared genetic mechanisms, the relationship with extraversion may be causal and bidirectional.
Too many idiot researchers that are either unable or unwilling to critically read the existing research. They just look at the abstracts which say "CBT/GET IS FUCKING AWESOME!!!11!!!ONE!11!!" and treat it as being indisputable truth.What I found annoying is the promotion of CBT and GET in this study.
Double LIKE!This notion always makes me want to scream, "How are we the ones who are self centered when its the extroverts saying the world would be a better place if only everyone were just like them?!!!"
The rest of the study may be subject to Occham´s razor, I guess.While 42% of the MZ twin pairs were concordant for chronic fatigue of six months or longer,
only 29% of the DZ twin pairs were concordant for this definition of chronic fatigue.
Likewise, 26% of the MZ and 13% of the DZ twin pairs were concordant for CFS-like illness.
The higher concordance rates in MZ than in DZ twin pairs suggest that chronic fatigue and CFS-like illness are heritable, a condition that is necessary for further analysis of genetic confounding between ...
Even more plain, although it´s not said (in the abstract) what the criteria are (the CCC have been implemented in 2003 only), whereas the 2013 article uses the 1994 Fukuda criteria.For idiopathic chronic fatigue, the concordance rates were 55% in monozygotic and 19% in dizygotic twins (p =.042).
The estimated heritability in liability was
19% (95% confidence interval = 0-56) for chronic fatigue > or =6 months,
30% (95% confidence interval = 0-81) for chronic fatigue not explained by medical conditions, and
51% (95% confidence interval = 7-96) for idiopathic chronic fatigue.
These results provide evidence supporting the familial aggregation of fatigue and suggest that genes may play a role in the etiology of chronic fatigue syndrome.