Solomon, Laura, Nisenbaum, Rosane, Reyes, Michele et al. · Health and quality of life outcomes · 2003 · DOI
This study surveyed people in Wichita, Kansas to understand how ME/CFS affects daily life and work. Researchers found that people with ME/CFS were just as impaired in their ability to work and do activities as people whose fatigue came from other medical or psychiatric conditions, and all of them had much less energy than people without fatigue.
This study demonstrates that ME/CFS causes significant real-world disability in employment and daily activities, challenging any notion that the illness is less impairing than other chronic conditions. By comparing ME/CFS patients to both medically/psychiatrically explained fatigue and non-fatigued controls, it provides evidence that ME/CFS represents a distinct entity with substantial functional consequences.
This study does not establish causation—it shows correlation between ME/CFS diagnosis and reduced functioning but cannot determine whether ME/CFS causes the disability or whether disability causes changes in health status. The cross-sectional design means it captures a single time point and cannot track how functional status changes over the course of illness. The study also does not measure the severity of individual symptoms like post-exertional malaise or cognitive dysfunction in detail.
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
Solomon, Laura, Nisenbaum, Rosane, Reyes, Michele, Papanicolaou, Dimitris A, & Reeves, William C (2003). Functional status of persons with chronic fatigue syndrome in the Wichita, Kansas, population.. Health and quality of life outcomes. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-1-48
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-solomon-2003-functional-status,
author = {Solomon, Laura and Nisenbaum, Rosane and Reyes, Michele and Papanicolaou, Dimitris A and Reeves, William C},
title = {Functional status of persons with chronic fatigue syndrome in the Wichita, Kansas, population.},
journal = {Health and quality of life outcomes},
year = {2003},
doi = {10.1186/1477-7525-1-48},
note = {PubMed: 14577835},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/solomon-2003-functional-status},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/solomon-2003-functional-status
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