Just thought I would follow up my previous post about the 1990 JAMA article with this info.
I just re-read the original JAMA article (I had a hard copy of it in my files) and the study was on "chronic fatigue" and not CFS. The authors note this at the end of their paper, saying that their patients were selected prior to the establishment of the 1988 CDC (Holmes) criteria. Looking at their own study in light of the new definition, they found that
only 6 of their 26 patients met the "stringent criteria" for CFS. They maintained that their paper was still of value for doctors with patients who fell into the broader category of those who did not meet the CDC definition.
The incredible thing about this study, however, was how widely it was reported as showing that depression
was linked to CFS, not chronic fatigue, with headlines such as these that I found on the internet:
"Yuppie Flue (sic) Only Depression"
"Depression, not Virus, Likely Case of Yuppie Flu"
"Study Links Depression to Fatigue Syndrome"
Opening of the UPI version for the story:
Depression may be the primary cause of debilitating chronic fatigue syndrome, the so-called "yuppie flu," and not a common virus, scientists said yesterday.
This was all dead wrong, but was so widely publicized (I saw it reported on by my local television news in San Francisco in the summer of 1990) that the mischaracterization probably caused reverberations (i.e. prejudices) that last to this day.