Original ArticlePredictors for Persistence of Functional Somatic Symptoms in Adolescents
Section snippets
Method
The TRacking Adolescents' Individual Lives Survey (TRAILS) is a prospective cohort study of Dutch adolescents, approved by the Dutch Central Committee on Research Involving Human Subjects. Participating centers of TRAILS include various departments of the University Medical Center and University of Groningen, the Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, the University of Utrecht, the Radboud Medical Center Nijmegen, and the Parnassia Bavo group, all in The Netherlands. The current study
Results
The mean item score of FSS decreased during subsequent waves and was 0.47 (SD 0.35) at T1 (n = 2115), 0.39 (SD 0.35) at T2 (n = 2015), and 0.34 (SD 0.34) at T3 (n = 1636). A total of 2210 adolescents had valid data on FSS on at least one assessment wave (Figure 2; available at www.jpeds.com). Developmental pathways were examined for these adolescents. Figure 2 shows a flowchart with number of adolescents included in subsequent analyses.
Discussion
Our results suggest that 4.1% of adolescents suffer from persistent FSS from age 10 up to age 17. Of all adolescents that suffered from many FSSs at baseline (14.6%), 32.4% had persistent FSS (ie, having persistent instead of decreasing symptoms). Risk factors for persistence of FSS were being a girl, poor self-rated health, depressive symptoms, and high parent-reported FSS. Symptom diversity, anxiety, school absenteeism, and parental overprotection were not predictive of symptom persistence.
In
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2020, Journal of Psychosomatic ResearchCitation Excerpt :Cohen's d was calculated and reported to give an impression of the effect sizes of the associations. Because female gender [33,34] and number of somatic diseases [35,36] have been associated with persistence of symptoms and may be related to differences in symptom focusing and somatosensory amplification, we tested these variables as possible effect modifiers in all analyses. Effect modification was tested by using interaction terms.
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This research is part of TRAILS, which has been financially supported by various grants from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Zorgonderzoek Nederland Medische Wetenschappen, Gebied Maatschappij-en Gedragswetenschappen, the Dutch Ministry of Justice, the European Science Foundation, Biobanking and Biomolecular Research Infrastructure, the participating universities, and Accare Center for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.