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Article: Is Long COVID Really Chronic Fatigue Syndrome by Another Name?

Discussion in 'Long Covid news' started by Sly Saint, Aug 7, 2021.

  1. Sly Saint

    Sly Saint Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    https://www.publichealth.columbia.e...-really-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-another-name
     
    Sean, Michelle, sebaaa and 9 others like this.
  2. Forbin

    Forbin Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    From the article:
    I thought it was more often said to be about one million US cases (which is based on Leonard Jason's prevalence study).

    I think the CDC once claimed 1-4 million cases, but, as I recall, that included cases of "chronic fatigue" that didn't really meet the definition(s) of ME/CFS.
     
    alktipping, Michelle, sebaaa and 2 others like this.
  3. Webdog

    Webdog Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Perhaps they used this study.

    "...a predicted prevalence of 857/100,000 (p > 0.01), or roughly 2.8 million in the U.S."

    Estimating Prevalence, Demographics, and Costs of ME/CFS Using Large Scale Medical Claims Data and Machine Learning -- Valdez et. al. 2019
    https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fped.2018.00412/full

    Thread on this paper here
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 1, 2022
  4. Forbin

    Forbin Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    That's an interesting U.S. study, @Webdog. They attempt to avoid duplication of the "de-identified" patients who might be counted more than once during the period of 2011-2016 due to a change in insurance carriers. They do this by requiring patients in two subsets to have continuous coverage with the same carrier for either the entire 6 years between 2011-2016 (SUBSET 1), or a period of between 2-4 years continuous coverage during the same period of 2011-2016 (SUBSET 2).

    Unfortunately, this period (2011-2016) includes the time when the U.S. Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare") went into effect. During this time some insurance carriers stopped offering certain individual plans (the kind that disabled/unemployed ME patients might have had) or those plans became prohibitively expensive (at least they did in my state). As a result, I could see a lot of ME patients needing to change their insurance carriers during this time. Even if you remained with the same carrier, a new policy obtained through a "state marketplace" would almost certainly have a different identification number, allowing you to be counted more than once.

    Also, the six-year window would allow for duplication (possibly twice) in SUBSET 2, where only two years of continuous coverage is required. All this might have inflated the numbers.

    On the other hand, the study used a lot of data analysis and "machine learning" which could have mitigated this in some way.
     
    Last edited: Aug 8, 2021
    Peter Trewhitt likes this.

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