The British journal of dermatology · 2022 · DOI
Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a painful skin condition that causes recurrent boils, drainage, and scarring in areas like armpits and groin. This Dutch study surveyed over 167,000 people and found that HS is more common than previously thought (2% rather than 1%), and that people with HS often have other conditions including chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and depression. The study also found that many people with HS have not yet been diagnosed or treated.
This study is important for ME/CFS patients and researchers because it identifies chronic fatigue syndrome as a significantly more common comorbidity in people with HS, suggesting a potential shared pathophysiological pathway or overlapping patient population. Understanding these disease associations may help researchers identify common mechanisms of immune dysfunction and inform clinical screening practices. The high rate of undiagnosed cases highlights how poorly understood inflammatory conditions—including those affecting ME/CFS populations—remain in clinical practice.
This study does not establish causation between HS and associated conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome; the cross-sectional design only demonstrates correlation at a single timepoint. The self-report questionnaire methodology means diagnoses were not confirmed by medical evaluation, which may introduce recall bias and misclassification. The study does not clarify whether comorbidities are mechanistically related to HS pathophysiology or arise from shared risk factors such as smoking and lifestyle factors.
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
Unknown authors (2022). Findings from a survey about hidradenitis suppurativa in the Netherlands.. The British journal of dermatology. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjd.21253
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-unknown-2022-findings-survey,
author = {Unknown, Author},
title = {Findings from a survey about hidradenitis suppurativa in the Netherlands.},
journal = {The British journal of dermatology},
year = {2022},
doi = {10.1111/bjd.21253},
note = {PubMed: 35501937},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/unknown-2022-findings-survey},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-26. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/unknown-2022-findings-survey
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