Fatigue is commonly reported in many neurologic illnesses, including multiple sclerosis,
Parkinson disease, myasthenia gravis, traumatic brain injury, and
stroke. Fatigue contributes substantially to decrements in quality of
life and disability in these illnesses. Despite the clear impact of
fatigue as a disabling symptom, our understanding of fatigue
pathophysiology is limited and current treatment options rarely lead to
meaningful improvements in fatigue. Progress continues to be hampered by
issues related to terminology and assessment. In this article, we
propose a unified taxonomy and a novel assessment approach to addressing
distinct aspects of fatigue and fatigability in clinical and research
settings. This taxonomy is based on our current knowledge of the
pathophysiology and phenomenology of fatigue and fatigability.
Application of our approach indicates that the assessment and reporting
of fatigue can be clarified and improved by utilizing this taxonomy and
creating measures to address distinct aspects of fatigue and
fatigability. We review the strengths and weaknesses of several common
measures of fatigue and suggest, based on our model, that many research
questions may be better addressed by using multiple measures. We also provide examples of how to apply and validate the taxonomy and suggest directions for future research.
Fatigue is one of the big unmet problems with MS, this group is attempting to define it and indicates it is not a simple task. With better definitions may come better treatments but I hear you say this is not happening quick enough!
Labels: Fatigue