Delbanco, T L, Daley, J, Hartman, E E · JAMA · 1998 · DOI
This study describes the medical journey of one woman with ME/CFS over the course of a year, documenting how her symptoms changed and how different treatments affected her condition. The researchers tracked her experiences to provide insight into what living with ME/CFS is like over time and what approaches doctors tried to help her.
Individual case reports like this one contribute important real-world clinical details about ME/CFS disease progression and treatment responses that help clinicians recognize the condition and inform patient expectations. Though limited in scope, such documentation helps build the evidence base for understanding disease trajectories and management approaches.
This single case report cannot establish whether observed outcomes result from specific treatments or natural disease variation, and findings cannot be generalized to other ME/CFS patients. The lack of a control group means we cannot determine causation or compare whether interventions were more effective than no treatment.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Delbanco, T L, Daley, J, & Hartman, E E (1998). A 56-year-old woman with chronic fatigue syndrome, 1 year later.. JAMA. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.280.4.372
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-delbanco-1998-year-old,
author = {Delbanco, T L and Daley, J and Hartman, E E},
title = {A 56-year-old woman with chronic fatigue syndrome, 1 year later.},
journal = {JAMA},
year = {1998},
doi = {10.1001/jama.280.4.372},
note = {PubMed: 9686556},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/delbanco-1998-year-old},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/delbanco-1998-year-old
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