Public Health and Nutrition

Diagnostics and treatment of the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME) present a challenge to specialists as this syndrome is not a clearly identified, uniform disease but a set of symptoms resembling those occurring in other diseases, in which a sense of chronic fatigue predominates. Its global prevalence, ranging between 0.4% and 2.5%, is growing; most commonly, it is observed in the group of 20–40-year-olds, more frequently in professionally active women. CFS/ME is considered to be a common condition in countries such as the UK, Australia and the US [1,2]. In the UK, it affects up to 250,000 individuals with frequencies reported of up to 0.2% [3]. In the UK, Fukuda-defined cases have a prevalence of 0.2%. In the US, the prevalence of Fukuda-defined cases has been reported between 0.2%5 and 0.4%. Finding from the Australian cohort showed that from 535 patients diagnosed with CFS/ME by a primary care physician, 30.28% met Fukuda criteria. To date CFS/ME has not been reported in Poland, nor its prevalence defined. There are currently no CFS/ME Clinical services. Despite the evidence demonstrating the public health impact abroad, the characteristics of an Polish CFS/ME population have not been summarized. The aim of this study was to summarize sociodemographic and illness characteristics in those reporting CFS/ME symptoms in a Polish population. We set out to define the presence and characteristics of CFS/ME in Poland in order to identify a cohort of those patients who could potentially participate in further research studies.