Fatigue can mean many different things to many different people. But there is a common idea : fatigue is nothing like tiredness. Sufferers describe fatigue as like an "off button" on their daily activities. We are working with clinicians and researchers to understand the impact of fatigue on the daily lives of different patient groups, including long COVID, cancer and heart failure patients. Our goal is to find new objective measures of fatigue to support data collected from questionnaires or patient interviews currently conducted to report fatigue.
Symptoms
To many patients we were able to question, fatigue is very debilitating and highly variable. People suffering from chronic fatigue have symptoms that can seriously disrupt their daily lives. For example, when their fatigue is bad, it can become almost impossible to go up and down stairs. Even getting out of a chair and walking from one room to another is exhausting, and they need to rest afterwards. Sufferers can spend many hours a day in their bedroom, and getting out of bed takes them ages. Going to the kitchen to make a drink can feel like climbing a mountain. After going out shopping, they need to rest for a period. These symptoms can fluctuate significantly from day to day.
Measuring fatigue
Doctors might assess patients fatigue using questionnaires, but there are not yet any reliable ways of objectively measuring fatigue symptoms. As fatigue symptoms fluctuate, and may be impacted by medicines and exercise, questionnaires don't give us the granularity to properly characterize and study fatigue.
Treatments now and in the future
People with chronic fatigue may be given medicines, or be encouraged to take more exercise. But few patients find the currently available treatments provide much help. Medical researchers are, however, developing new medicines that may help treat fatigue. However, without good measures of fatigue, it is difficult to test whether these medicines work.