How many people have CFS?
More than four million Americans have CFS, according to studies conducted by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More than 80% of these patients have not been diagnosed and are not receiving proper medical care for their illness.

The newer prevalence figure is based on a study published June 8, 2007, in Population Health Metrics, which provides evidence that CFS is a significant public health problem that affects more than 4 million people in the United States. Researchers at the CDC surveyed more than 19,000 residents in Georgia and discovered that 2.54% of the people aged 18-59 met the clinical diagnosis for chronic fatigue syndrome. This is ten times higher than the rate researchers found in the 1990s when they surveyed residents of Wichita, Kansas, and six times higher than the rate found in Chicago, Illinois. Read the CFIDS Association’s press release at http://www.cfids.org/sparkcfs/pr060807.pdf and the full text of the article at http://www.pophealthmetrics.com/content/5/1/5.

Who gets CFS?
CFS does not discriminate. It strikes people of all age, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

Research has shown that CFS is about four times as common in women (522/100,000) as men, a rate similar to that of many autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and lupus. To put this into perspective, CFS is over four times more common than HIV infection in women (125/100,000), and the rate of CFS in women is considerably higher than a woman's lifetime risk of getting lung cancer (63/100,000).

Although few studies of CFS in children and adolescents have been published, it is well-accepted that young people do get CFS.