Hip
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This poll is for ME/CFS patients who have had their illness for 6 to 8 years or longer.
The poll asks whether over the first 6 to 8 years of your illness, you slowly got worse, slowly got better, or remained reasonably stable in that period?
Please exclude the first 2 years of your ME/CFS, because this is often the initial period where many patients get increasingly worse, as they descend into the illness.
But after the initial 2 years, did you find your ME/CFS slowly got worse over the subsequent 4 to 6 years, slowly improved over those 4 to 6 years, or remained fairly stable in that time? Please answer the poll accordingly.
By getting worse or improving, we mean approximately around a 1-level change (or more) on the ME/CFS scale of Very Severe – Severe – Moderate – Mild – Remission. For example, if in those 4 to 6 years you moved from moderate to mild, or from moderate to severe, those are both 1-level changes.
This poll also asks whether or not your ME/CFS appeared just after mononucleosis (glandular fever). If it did, please vote accordingly; and if your ME/CFS did not start after mononucleosis, again please vote accordingly.
The reason for this poll is as follows: a study found that 45% of post-mononucleosis ME/CFS patients returned to work after a 7 year period, so it seems like there are good recovery rates in the post-mononucleosis ME/CFS subset. Mononucleosis is caused by Epstein-Barr virus in around 90% of cases, and by cytomegalovirus in around 10% of cases.
Whereas another study that looked at improvement in ME/CFS in general over a 5 year period found that substantial improvement occurred in less that 6%. So that suggests that in the general case, natural improvement in ME/CFS is infrequent, whereas natural improvement is common in post-mononucleosis ME/CFS.
Thus this poll aims to see whether post-mononucleosis ME/CFS patients do indeed have a tendency towards natural improvement over time, in the first 6 to 8 years of their ME/CFS illness.
The poll asks whether over the first 6 to 8 years of your illness, you slowly got worse, slowly got better, or remained reasonably stable in that period?
Please exclude the first 2 years of your ME/CFS, because this is often the initial period where many patients get increasingly worse, as they descend into the illness.
But after the initial 2 years, did you find your ME/CFS slowly got worse over the subsequent 4 to 6 years, slowly improved over those 4 to 6 years, or remained fairly stable in that time? Please answer the poll accordingly.
By getting worse or improving, we mean approximately around a 1-level change (or more) on the ME/CFS scale of Very Severe – Severe – Moderate – Mild – Remission. For example, if in those 4 to 6 years you moved from moderate to mild, or from moderate to severe, those are both 1-level changes.
This poll also asks whether or not your ME/CFS appeared just after mononucleosis (glandular fever). If it did, please vote accordingly; and if your ME/CFS did not start after mononucleosis, again please vote accordingly.
The reason for this poll is as follows: a study found that 45% of post-mononucleosis ME/CFS patients returned to work after a 7 year period, so it seems like there are good recovery rates in the post-mononucleosis ME/CFS subset. Mononucleosis is caused by Epstein-Barr virus in around 90% of cases, and by cytomegalovirus in around 10% of cases.
Whereas another study that looked at improvement in ME/CFS in general over a 5 year period found that substantial improvement occurred in less that 6%. So that suggests that in the general case, natural improvement in ME/CFS is infrequent, whereas natural improvement is common in post-mononucleosis ME/CFS.
Thus this poll aims to see whether post-mononucleosis ME/CFS patients do indeed have a tendency towards natural improvement over time, in the first 6 to 8 years of their ME/CFS illness.
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