Jason, L A, Taylor, R R, Kennedy, C L et al. · The Journal of nervous and mental disease · 2000 · DOI
This study looked at people with ME/CFS living in the Chicago community to understand how the condition affects their work, healthcare use, and daily life. Researchers randomly surveyed over 18,000 people, identified those with ME/CFS symptoms, and had doctors confirm their diagnosis. They found that people with ME/CFS differed significantly from each other in how sick they were, when their illness started, and whether a stressful event triggered it.
Most ME/CFS research has studied patients already in the healthcare system, who may be systematically different from the broader ME/CFS population. This community-based approach provides a more representative picture of ME/CFS diversity and burden, helping clinicians understand the full spectrum of disease presentations and identify unmet needs in different patient subgroups.
This study does not establish cause-and-effect relationships between stressful life events and CFS onset—it only documents associations. The cross-sectional design means we cannot determine whether observed occupational patterns reflect selection into healthcare professions or whether healthcare work increases CFS risk. Community telephone sampling may miss the most severely affected patients unable to participate.
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
Jason, L A, Taylor, R R, Kennedy, C L, Song, S, Johnson, D, & Torres, S (2000). Chronic fatigue syndrome: occupation, medical utilization, and subtypes in a community-based sample.. The Journal of nervous and mental disease. https://doi.org/10.1097/00005053-200009000-00002
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-jason-2000-chronic-fatigue-2,
author = {Jason, L A and Taylor, R R and Kennedy, C L and Song, S and Johnson, D and Torres, S},
title = {Chronic fatigue syndrome: occupation, medical utilization, and subtypes in a community-based sample.},
journal = {The Journal of nervous and mental disease},
year = {2000},
doi = {10.1097/00005053-200009000-00002},
note = {PubMed: 11009329},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jason-2000-chronic-fatigue-2},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jason-2000-chronic-fatigue-2
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