| Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 1988, which is a syndrome characterized with unknown fatigue persisting or relapsing for six months or longer. There is no effective therapy by now, so traditional Chinese medicine is expected to find a new way to cure the disease. In the mainland researches have been done in the epidemical features, symptoms, TCM syndrome, prognosis of CFS, etc. however, there still are not many researches on it. 1. Theoretical Study Psychological study of CFS Modern researches consider that psychological stress factor is one of the most important reasons which produce and affect CFS. The ratio of negative affairs is higher in CFS sufferers before they are taken bad. And there are many mental symptoms and changes of psychological features. More and more psychological therapies have been used in the CFS researches, among which cognitive therapy has acquired a good effect. 1.2 Epidemical study of CFS With the development of the society and the severity of competition, the amount of CFS has been increased. In western countries CFS has been one of the five most important reasons to go to hospitals. Comparing the reports of the countries the distribution of CFS is different. The incidence of CFS is higher in developed countries than developing countries. It is also considered that the incidence will be higher with the time going on. And the ages of most sufferers are from 30 to 50. The relation between CFS and sex is uncertain. Besides, more CFS sufferers occur in the people who accepted higher education and have a good income. By now there is not epidemical research of CFS in Taiwan, but there have been more and more sufferers in clinics. 2 . Clinical Study 2.1 The epidemical survey of CFS in Chinese medicine clinics of Taiwan In this research, we investigated 421 cases of Chinese medical clinics in Taiwan, among which there are 30 CFS cases, and the incidence rate is about 7.126%. In the sex distribution the amount of females is larger than males, but the percentages are similar. And the incidence rate is highest in the age group of 20 to 30. In the age groups of 31-40, 41-50, 51-65 the incidence rates are average. And there are no CFS cases below 20 or above 60 in this research. In occupations, the incidence rates are higher in business men and students than office clerks and workers. And the incidence rate increases with education level, but it could be associated with the education condition of Taiwan. 2.2 The study on symptom of CFS in Taiwan Through analyzing the 30cases, we compared the symptoms for their incidence rates. There are 53 common clinical symptoms for CFS, including chronic fatigue, inattentions, depressions, poor memory, cold-fear, halitosis, swimmy, sleeping with poor recovery, insomnia, etc. Compared with the normal group, the symptoms of two groups are different evidently. Comparing the result with the past conclusion of the mainland, we can see that sufferers in Taiwan have more symptoms and the sequences of symptoms are different. The symptoms of inattentions and depressions in Taiwan are former in the sequence and fatigue of mentality is severer. This could be associated with the bigger oppression in Taiwan. And the incidences of bitter taste of mouth, perturbed and cold-like, etc. are higher than the mainland, which could be associated with the climate and foods. Incidences of the symptoms in the diagnostic criteria of CDC are also compared. It includes chronic fatigue, inattentions, sleeping with poor recovery, failure to recover from exercise in 24hs, poor memory, headache, joint ache, pharyngalgia, sore muscles, swelling of lymph nodes in neck and jaw. And the results of the two areas are similar. Among those symptoms, chronic fatigue and insomnia happen most frequently, and the incidence of lymph node swelling is the least frequent. Self-rating anxiety scale(SAS) and self-rating depression scale(SDS) are used in the research to analyze the characteristics of mentality of CFS in Taiwan. |
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