Oki, Junichi, Okubo, Jun · Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine · 2007
This small study looked at growth charts from three young people with chronic fatigue syndrome to see if the charts could help identify what triggered their illness. The researchers found that life events—like overexercise, family stress, or infection—appeared before symptoms like extreme tiredness, nausea, and sleep problems started. While growth charts alone cannot predict who will develop ME/CFS, they may help doctors spot important life changes that happened around the time symptoms began.
Understanding potential triggers for ME/CFS in children—such as stress, infection, and overexertion—is crucial for early recognition and management. This study suggests that routine clinical tools like growth charts can help clinicians identify when significant life events preceded illness onset, potentially improving patient outcomes through earlier intervention and appropriate activity modification.
This study does not establish that growth chart changes cause ME/CFS, only that they may temporally correlate with symptom onset. The case series design (n=3) cannot determine prevalence or incidence of ME/CFS in children, nor can it prove that identified stressors are causative rather than coincidental. The findings are descriptive and exploratory rather than confirmatory.
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
Oki, Junichi & Okubo, Jun (2007). [Usefulness of growth chart in children and adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome].. Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17561706/
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-oki-2007-usefulness-growth,
author = {Oki, Junichi and Okubo, Jun},
title = {[Usefulness of growth chart in children and adolescents with chronic fatigue syndrome].},
journal = {Nihon rinsho. Japanese journal of clinical medicine},
year = {2007},
note = {PubMed: 17561706},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/oki-2007-usefulness-growth},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/oki-2007-usefulness-growth
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