From Medical News Today:
Researchers studying chronic fatigue rates in the United States saw a dip in the syndrome immediately after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, suggesting a possible “fight or flight” effect may have put some people’s fatigue into remission, a new study finds . . .
Heim says the study results may be skewed, if fatigued individuals represented a disproportionate number of people who dropped out of the project after the attacks . . .
A number of potential explanations exist for their findings, which are published in the current issue of the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. One possibility is that the terrorist attacks may have distracted the attention of those suffering from their fatigue or altered their perceptions of fatigue . . .
Heim and colleagues call for more research to determine potential psychological or biological mechanisms for their findings. They also note that their study was designed only to note an association between Sept. 11 and CFS rates; more research is needed to prove whether the terrorist attacks affected CFS rates . . .
Also, since their study ended only three months after the attacks, it wasn’t long enough to detect new cases of CFS that may have been related to the attacks . . .
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