Aim: To study health related quality of life (HRQOL) and depressive symptoms in adolescents with chronic fatigue\nsyndrome (CFS) and to investigate in which domains their HRQOL and depressive symptoms differ from those of\nhealthy adolescents.\nBackground and objective: Several symptoms such as disabling fatigue, pain and depressive symptoms affect\ndifferent life domains of adolescents with CFS. Compared to adolescents with other chronic diseases, young people\nwith CFS are reported to be severely impaired, both physiologically and mentally. Despite this, few have\ninvestigated the HRQOL in this group.\nMethod: This is a cross-sectional study on HRQOL including 120 adolescents with CFS and 39 healthy controls (HC),\nbetween 12 and 18 years. The Pediatric Quality of Life Inventoryââ??¢, 4.0 (PedsQL) was used to assess HRQOL. The\nMood and Feelings Questionnaire assessed depressive symptoms. Data were collected between March 2010 and\nOctober 2012 as part of the NorCAPITAL project (Norwegian Study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in Adolescents:\nPathophysiology and Intervention Trial). Linear and logistic regression models were used in analysis, and all tests\nwere two-sided.\nResults: Adolescents with CFS reported significantly lower overall HRQOL compared to HCs. When controlling for\ngender differences, CFS patients scored 44 points lower overall HRQOL on a scale from 0ââ?¬â??100 compared to HCs.\nThe domains with the largest differences were interference with physical health (B = ?59, 95 % CI ?54 to ?65) and\nschool functioning (B = ?52, 95 % CI ?45 to ?58). Both depressive symptoms and being a patient were\nindependently associated with lower levels of HRQOL\nConclusion: The difference in HRQOL between CFS patients and healthy adolescents was even larger than we\nexpected. The large sample of adolescents with CFS in our study confirms previous findings from smaller studies,\nand emphasizes that CFS is a seriously disabling condition that has a strong impact on their HRQOL. Even though\ndepressive symptoms were found in the group of patients, they could not statistically explain the poor HRQOL
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