The Nation - News from Aug. 19, 1988

Chronic fatigue is one of the most common complaints patients take to their doctors, but it may be associated more with anxiety or depression than with any physical disease, a study indicated. A test for detecting the virus sometimes blamed for chronic fatigue--the Epstein-Barr virus--appears of little help in determining the cause of a patient’s tiredness or what the treatment should be, another study said. Both were reported in today’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. Doctors should pay attention to complaints of tiredness, because it can affect life as profoundly as a heart attack, said Dr. Kurt Kroenke, assistant chief of medicine at Brooke Army Medical Center at Ft. Sam Houston, Tex. Kroenke and colleagues said 24% of 1,159 adults who answered questionnaires at base clinics in 1986 identified fatigue as a “major problem.”