{"id":13637,"date":"2017-06-26T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T09:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=13637"},"modified":"2017-08-14T05:02:52","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T05:02:52","slug":"chronic-fatigue-idiopathic-intracranial-hypertension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/chronic-fatigue-idiopathic-intracranial-hypertension\/","title":{"rendered":"Chronic fatigue & idiopathic intracranial hypertension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Medical hypothesis abstract:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chronic fatigue syndrome and idiopathic intracranial hypertension:\u00a0Different manifestations of the same disorder of intracranial\u00a0pressure?<\/a> by\u00a0J. Nicholas P. Higgins, John D. Pickard, Andrew M.L.\u00a0Lever in<\/span> Medical Hypotheses<\/em> Vol 105, pp 6-9,\u00a0August 2017 [Available online 24 June 2017]<\/p>\n

Though not discussed in the medical literature or considered in clinical\u00a0practice, there are similarities between chronic fatigue syndrome and\u00a0idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) which ought to encourage\u00a0exploration of a link between them.<\/p>\n

The cardinal symptoms of each –\u00a0fatigue and headache – are common in the other and their multiple other\u00a0symptoms are frequently seen in both. The single discriminating factor\u00a0is raised intracranial pressure, evidenced in IIH usually by the sign of\u00a0papilloedema, regarded as responsible for the visual symptoms which can\u00a0lead to blindness.<\/p>\n

Some patients with IIH, however, do not have\u00a0papilloedema and these patients may be clinically indistinguishable from\u00a0patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. Yet IIH is rare, IIH without\u00a0papilloedema (IIHWOP) seems rarer still, while chronic fatigue syndrome
\nis common. So are the clinical parallels spurious or is there a way to\u00a0reconcile these conflicting observations?<\/p>\n

We suggest that it is a quirk of clinical measurement that has created\u00a0this discrepancy. Specifically, that the criteria put in place to define\u00a0IIH have led to a failure to appreciate the existence, clinical\u00a0significance or numerical importance of patients with lower level
\ndisturbances of intracranial pressure. We argue that this has led to a\u00a0grossly implausible distortion of the epidemiology of IIH such that the\u00a0milder form of the illness (IIHWOP) is seen as less common than the more\u00a0severe and that this would be resolved by recognising a connection with\u00a0chronic fatigue syndrome.<\/p>\n

We hypothesise, therefore, that IIH, IIHWOP, lesser forms of IIH and an\u00a0undetermined proportion of chronic fatigue cases are all manifestations\u00a0of the same disorder of intracranial pressure across a spectrum of\u00a0disease severity, in which this subset of chronic fatigue syndrome would\u00a0represent the most common and least severe and IIH the least common and\u00a0most extreme.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Medical hypothesis abstract: Chronic fatigue syndrome and idiopathic intracranial hypertension:\u00a0Different manifestations of the same disorder of intracranial\u00a0pressure? by\u00a0J. Nicholas P. Higgins, John D. Pickard, Andrew M.L.\u00a0Lever in Medical Hypotheses Vol 105, pp 6-9,\u00a0August 2017 [Available online 24 June 2017] Though … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[3880,9,2214,472,3881,3879],"class_list":["post-13637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-andrew-ml-lever","tag-chronic-fatigue","tag-headache","tag-idiopathic-intracranial-hypertension","tag-john-d-pickard","tag-nicholas-p-higgins"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-3xX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14011,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13637\/revisions\/14011"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}