A neuropsychological study of the chronic fatigue syndrome: Support for a deficit in memory function independent of depression

Abstract

Well-controlled studies of the cognitive status of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) participants are rare. This study aimed to examine the deficit in cognitive functioning in CFS after the effects of depression had been controlled. Twenty-six CFS sufferers and twenty-six matched control participants were compared on the Chronic Fatigue Symptom Checklist, the Illness Behaviour Questionnaire, the Beck Depression Inventory, Performance IQ from the WAIS-R, the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test, the Controlled Oral Word Association Test, and a series of measures of attention and concentration tasks including the Digit Span Test, the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test, and Simple and Choice Reaction. In these participants with a medically confirmed diagnosis of CFS, there is a high endorsement of cognitive-related items on self-report measures. There is also a significantly higher level of depressive and hypochondriacal mentation. However, once the effects of depressive mentation had been partialled out, a significantly lower performance on the learning across trials of the RAVLT persisted. This indicates that a pattern of impairment characteristic of this group has been observed and supports the notion of central nervous system compromise in these participants.