A Community-based Study of Prolonged Fatigue and Chronic Fatigue

Previous estimates of the prevalence of fatigue and chronic fatigue have derived largely from treated populations and have been biased by differential access to health-care treatment linked with gender, racial/ethnic and social class status. This study involves a community-based prevalence study of prolonged fatigue and chronic fatigue. It addresses: (1) the rate of prolonged fatigue and chronic fatigue in a socioeconomically and ethnically diverse sample of 28,673 adults in Chicago; and (2) establishes the relative prevalence of prolonged fatigue and chronic fatigue across race/ethnicity, socio-economic status and gender. Univariate and multivariate statistical techniques were utilized to delineate the overall rate of prolonged fatigue and chronic fatigue in the Chicago population and its relative prevalence by gender, race/ethnicity, and social class. Findings indicated that fatigue is common in urban populations, but that prolonged fatigue and chronic fatigue occur in about 5.00 to 7.68 percent and 2.72 to 4.17 percent, respectively, of the sample of the population. Highest levels of fatigue were consistently found among women and those with lower levels of education and occupational status.     

Quantitative study of the immunoglobulin-containing cells in trephine samples of bone marrow

Immunoglobulin (Ig) was demonstrated in paraffin sections of 12 trephine bone marrow biopsies by means of the unlabelled antibody peroxidase-antiperoxidase (PAP) method. The Ig-containing cells, which were counted with the Reichert-Jung (Kontron) MOP-AMO₃ user-controlled image-analyser, were found to constitute approximately 4·2% of all the nucleated cells in the marrow, a figure significantly higher than those reported by previous workers.     

Speech characteristics in the Kabuki syndrome

Six children with Kabuki syndrome were studied to investigate speech patterns associated with the syndrome. Each child's speech was characterized with regard to articulation (types of errors and intelligibility), pitch (high or low), loudness (volume of speech), and prosody (general quality of speech that combines rate and inflection). All six children had a history of delayed speech and language acquisition and were receiving speech services. All individuals had articulation errors and abnormal oral resonance, which appeared to be due to poor oral-motor coordination and hypotonia and were not felt to be due to structural abnormalities such as velopharyngeal insufficiency, dental malocclusion, or cleft palate. An intriguing finding, noted in the two individuals followed from childhood into adolescence with serial speech evaluations, was that pitch, loudness, and prosody did not mature over time and what was age appropriate performance at younger ages became inappropriate in adolescence. This raises a challenge for speech services, as by adolescence, while articulation had improved, the pitch and loudness of these individuals' speech had not and so was noticeably different from peers. Distinctive speech characteristics with a lack of normal maturation during childhood can be added to the extensive list of clinical features associated with the Kabuki syndrome and hopefully will lead to improved speech/language treatment for individuals with this syndrome.