Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a complex condition involving at least 6 months of severe fatigue and disabling musculoskeletal and cognitive symptoms (impairment in short-term memory or concentration, headache, tender lymphadenopathy, muscle or joint pain, unrefreshed sleep and post-exertional malaise lasting > 24 hours) without another explanation (
1). Anywhere from about 25-90% of adolescent patients with CFS can identify a trigger, often an infection (
2). Chronic fatigue accounts for marked functional impairment and educational disruption among adolescents (
3,
4).
In adults, about 10% of individuals meet the criteria for CFS 6 months following infectious mononucleosis (IM) (
5-
7). We recently reported that 6, 12 and 24 months following infectious mononucleosis (IM), 13%, 7% and 4% of adolescents, respectively, met criteria for CFS (
8). Previous reports from this cohort examined peak work capacity (
9), orthostatic intolerance (
10), activity level (
11) autonomic system complaints (
12) and cytokines (
13). The current report concerns serial measurements of endocrinologic and immunologic function.
Whether hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis abnormalities or subtle immune deficits accompany CFS is controversial. The HPA axis is activated by stress, Addison’s disease can cause a clinical picture similar to CFS, and HPA dysregulation may be seen with depression. Of all the immunological parameters studied in patients with CFS, NK cell abnormalities are the most consistently reported (
14), but even here results are not completely consistent; in fact, sometimes even the same groups do not obtain exactly the same results in different studies (
15,
16). At least 7 groups have reported decreased NK cell activity in at least half of the patients with CFS studied (
15-
24). In 2 studies the severity of fatigue correlated with the decreased NK cell activity (
17,
20). In many of these studies, the percentage of NK cells was normal (
16,
21-
23). Two groups reported normal NK cell activity in patients with CFS (
25,
26). Many of these studies used the older 1988 Holmes definition (
27) for CFS (
15,
18-
20,
25). One recent study reported longitudinal data (
24), as did ours.
Salivary cortisol is a useful and reliable index of adrenocortical activity. Awakening is a mild stressor, and thus morning cortisol (which remains elevated for at least an hour) is an indicator of the responsiveness of the hypothalamic pituitary axis that is not affected by age, sleep duration, time of awakening, use of an alarm clock, smoking, or the use of contraceptives. Finally, salivary cortisol collection avoids the possibly confounding stress of venipuncture (
28).
Previous studies in adults have reported mixed results regarding CFS and salivary cortisol: Two studies showed no differences between patients with CFS and matched controls (
29,
30). One study could not show a relationship between fatigue following IM and salivary cortisol (
31). Three studies showed decreased morning and/or evening salivary cortisol vs. controls (
28,
32,
33). In 1 study this was true only in females in the morning (
34). One study showed decreased morning but increased evening cortisol vs. controls (
35).