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Simon Wessely, MD,MSc,FRCP,FRCPsych,FMedSci

JAMA. 2001;286:1378-1379.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

Systematic reviews have 2 aims. The first is to produce an unbiased, detailed, and comprehensive synthesis of a particular subject. The second is to permit the emergence of consensus, informing but not mandating clinicians as to which interventions work for which patients. In this issue of THE JOURNAL, Whiting and colleagues¹ report a major systematic qualitative review of the interventions used for treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). The results highlight the strengths of the systematic approach, the weakness of the CFS evidence base, and the destructive ideological fault lines that continue to divide the field, to the benefit of no one.

The authors have succeeded in satisfying the first requirement, that of producing a systematic synthesis of the literature on the treatment of CFS. This is no small achievement in a subject for which previous efforts have been notable for the evidence they provide of the . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Author Affiliation: Department of Psychological Medicine, Guy's King and St Thomas's School of Medicine and Institute of Psychiatry, London, England.

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Interventions for the Treatment and Management of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Systematic Review
Penny Whiting, Anne-Marie Bagnall, Amanda J. Sowden, John E. Cornell, Cynthia D. Mulrow, and Gilbert Ramírez
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