Publication trends in chronic fatigue syndrome: Comparisons with fibromyalgia and fatigue: 1995–2004

ObjectiveIn order to identify publishing patterns in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), we compared the annual number of peer review articles for CFS, fibromyalgia (FM), and non-CFS fatigue over a recent decade (1995–2004).MethodCitations were drawn from Ovid/Medline, PsychInfo, and the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for peer review articles focusing on CFS, FM, and fatigue for each year of the decade ending in 2004. Statistics included chi-square, tests for differences in proportions, and regression-based curve estimation.ResultsThe frequency of CFS peer review articles did not significantly change from the first half to the second half of the decade (1995–2004). By comparison, the output of both FM and fatigue articles significantly increased (P<.0001). A quadratic model (inverted U shape; P<.02) best fit the data for CFS annual publication frequency. By comparison, exponential models best fit the data for both FM (P<.0001) and fatigue (P<.0001) citations.The highest percentage of citations (15–16%) for both CFS and FM fell within the domains of diagnosis, physiopathology, and psychology. For fatigue, almost one third (31.4%) of the citations were focused on etiology, while psychology (11.5%) and physiopathology (10.4%) articles were the next most cited. Based on first-author affiliation, CFS articles were most likely to originate in the United States (37.7%), England (31.4%), and the Netherlands (4.9%).ConclusionThe output of CFS peer review articles has not increased over the past decade, while the number of FM and fatigue articles has increased substantially.