Fatigue in the general population.
BACKGROUND
Fatigue symptoms are often found in cancer patients. One test to assess fatigue is the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20). It has been successfully applied to specific groups of cancer patients. However, until now population-based norm values are missing.


METHODS
We conducted an investigation on a representative sample of the adult German population, which comprised 2,037 subjects aged 14-92 years.


RESULTS
The reliability of the 5 MFI-20 subscales (general fatigue, physical fatigue, reduced activity, reduced motivation, and mental fatigue) is satisfying. The correlations between MFI-20 subscales and the fatigue scale of the quality-of-life questionnaire EORTC indicate convergent validity. As an important result we found that all subscales of the MFI-20 showed a clear and nearly linear dependency on age with higher fatigue values for older subjects (p < 0.0001). Females as compared with males are characterized by higher mean values in all MFI-20 subscales (p < 0.001).


CONCLUSIONS
The results show that it is necessary to take into account age and sex when different groups of cancer patients have to be compared.
Schwarz
R
R
Abteilung für Sozialmedizin, Universität Leipzig, Germany. schwarzr@medizin.uni-leipzig.de
Krauss
O
O
Hinz
A
A
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005221:Fatigue / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D005222:Mental Fatigue / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000209:etiology; D008875:Middle Aged; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D011788:Quality of Life; D012016:Reference Values; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D018434:Sickness Impact Profile