Medically unexplained syndromes–Looking for common reasons

Abstract

Approximately 15% of general practice doctor's patients and 50% of patients with chronic disease experience persistent physical symptoms, which do not have medical reasons. Those symptoms are often associated with high levels of distress, limited efficiency and consumption of health resources. Each set of symptoms has particular diagnostic features and own operational definition. However, there is a phenomenon of combination of different syndromes. Approximately 96% of patients have several concurrent diagnoses of different syndromes at the same time. One of the explicative hypotheses is the premise that there is a latent factor common for all medically unexplained syndromes (Deary, 1999). The verification of the assumption about latent factor was based on studies of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and chronic fatigue (CF). The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between selected sets of symptoms and their conditions in the biopsychosocial paradigm. Hundred and fourty-nine young women (aged 18–27years) were examined following questionnaires: PSST, CFSQ, NEO-FFI, PTS, TPI, KAS. The relationship between symptoms of PMS and CF is 0.517 ( P =0.000). The adopted model explaining variables: (1) the PMS 33.3% of the variability of results, the most important are: neuroticism (β=0.436), the strength of excitation (β=0.229) and negative emotions–anger (β=0.206); 2) in CF 57.1% of the variability of results, the most important are: neuroticism (β=0.298) and negative emotions-anxiety (β=0.275). The relationship between the severity of different medically unexplained syndromes in women is moderate. Among biopsychosocial determinants the most important is the severity of neuroticism and negative emotionality.