Latest Estimates for Number of People with CFS?

[Skyline]

I've been hunting around for estimates of the population affected by CFS/ with it. Not coming up with much so far, are there any surveys or studies you can point me towards?

Thanks.

 

[Esther12]

Depends on the criteria used, and how the data is collected.

0.2-2.5% of the population seems commonly cited.

 

[caledonia]

About a million US and 17 million worldwide. The best studies are those done by Leonard Jason. The ones done by the CDC are flawed.

 

[Firestormm]

I use 0.2-0.4% in the UK. But nothing has properly been done that really examines prevalence let alone incidence. There are attempts being made to do just that - the ME Disease Register project in the UK for example - but it's early days and who knows how it will all pan out if something like a Biomarker is found it could change the landscape completely

 

[alex3619]

7 billion people. At a prevalence of 0.2%, that comes out at 14,000,000 globally. For 0.4% its 28,000,000. This of course presumes that prevalence is uniform and not variable due to local factors, from nutrition to medical care or cultural factors. So pick your prevalence rate and do the math.

What is perhaps misleading here is this. Many sources are worried CFS is on the increase, though they usually do not cite ME prevalence. This includes insurance companies, which comment on this from time to time. So the old prevalence rates may be meaningless today, prevalence could be much higher. Or the increase might have plateaued. We just don't know. Prevalence might even have gone down, but I seriously doubt it. The point is we don't have current data, or even very reliable data.

As Firestormm says a biomarker or good diagnostic test is really needed before we can get reliable incidence or prevalence.

Due to the long term nature of ME its also possible that incidence is stable, but this means a steadily rising prevalence. I wish I knew the answer to this.

 

[WillowJ]

here's an older Jason paper (1999):
http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=415556

This is a new-ish review (2009). I thought there was a newer study but I cannot find it at the moment.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21243091

some additional studied can be found through the citations of these. the Jason et al. discussions are pretty good discussing the respective merits of them. (besides what was said on this thread elsewhere)

 

[Guido den Broeder]

CFS estimates are not informative because of the many different definitions.

ME estimates are slightly below 0.1% of the population in the western world. AFAIK there are no indications that the percentage increases. It is likely to be significantly less in areas where due to poorer hygiene herpes viruses strike at a younger age, when the immune system is more flexible.

 

[Skyline]

Wow, I'm stupefied *in a good way*. Thanks for all this information, I wasn't coming up with much at all. Great references.