ArticlePloS one2018
Fatigue symptoms in relation to neuroticism, anxiety-depression, and musculoskeletal pain. A longitudinal twin study.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 73 citations in OpenAlex.
- Understanding General Somatic Symptom Burden: Insights from a Systematic Review of Factor Analyses Pertaining to the Patient Health Questionnaire 15 (PHQ-15) and Somatic Symptom Scale 8 (SSS-8).International journal of behavioral medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Personality and fatigue: meta-analysis of seven prospective studies.Scientific reports · 2022Pooled it
- Decoding IBS: a machine learning approach to psychological distress and gut-brain interaction.BMC gastroenterology · 2024Trial
- Sleep disturbances as early indicators of incident psychiatric disease.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Article
- Disentangling comorbidity: symptom dimensions of internalizing and functional disorders in a large general population sample.BMC psychiatry · 2026Article
- Recovery indicators from the perspective of patients with chronic low back pain: a cross-sectional survey.Pain management · 2025Article
- Prospective associations between major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, fibromyalgia, and myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome.Psychological medicine · 2025Article
- Sleep disorders and mental health: Understanding the cognitive connection.World journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Personality Traits in Fibromyalgia: Aggravators and Attenuators of Clinical Symptoms and Medication Use.Behavioural neurology · 2025Article
- Pressure-pain thresholds of the plantar foot reflect relative tissue thickness and are systematically higher in active runners than non-runners.Frontiers in physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Individual work-motive values: determinants and consequences for the appraisal of specific health-related work characteristics.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Associations between excessive fatigue and pain, sleep, mental-health and work factors in Norwegian nurses.PloS one · 2023Article
- Effect of medium-chain triglycerides supplements and walking on health-related quality of life in sedentary, healthy middle-aged, and older adults with low BMIs: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group trial.Frontiers in nutrition · 2023Article
- Is the Pandemic Wearing Us Out? A Cross-Sectional Study of the Prevalence of Fatigue in Adult Twins without Previous SARS-CoV-2 Infection.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Determinants and Clinical Significance of Musculoskeletal Symptoms in Patients With Chronic Graft-Versus-Host Disease.HemaSphere · 2022Article
- Impact of Somatic Vulnerability, Psychosocial Robustness and Injury-Related Factors on Fatigue following Traumatic Brain Injury-A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Working at home and expectations of being available: effects on perceived work environment, turnover intentions, and health.Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health · 2022Article
- Neuroimaging Parameters Are Not Associated With Chronic Post-stroke Fatigue in Young Stroke Patients.Frontiers in neurology · 2022Article
- Exploring Fatigue Sensitivity in terms of Mental Health and Fatigue Severity among a Racially and Ethnically Diverse Sample with Severe Fatigue.Fatigue : biomedicine, health & behavior · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe nature of the relationship between fatigue and its risk factors is poorly understood. In the present study the genetic and environmental association between anxiety-depression, musculoskeletal (MS) pain and fatigue was examined, and the role of neuroticism as a shared risk factor that may possibly explain the co-occurrence between these phenotypes was investigated in a combined cross-sectional and longitudinal twin design.
methodsThe sample consisted of 746 monozygotic (MZ) and 770 dizygotic (DZ) twins in the age group of 50-65 (mean = 57.11 years, SD = 4.5). Continuous measures of fatigue symptoms and the other phenotypes were employed. Using Cholesky modeling, genetic and environmental influences on the phenotypes, and the associations among them, were determined. Analyses were performed using measures of neuroticism obtained concurrently and 13-19 years earlier.
resultsResults from multiple regression analyses showed that neuroticism, anxiety-depression symptoms, and MS pain were all significantly associated with fatigue, controlling for sex, education, and general health indices. The best-fitting biometric models included additive genetic and individual-specific environmental effects. Heritabilities in the 0.40-0.53 range were demonstrated. Furthermore, while there was a considerable overlap in genetic risk factors between the four phenotypes, a substantial proportion of the genetic risk shared between anxiety-depression and fatigue, and between MS pain and fatigue, was independent of neuroticism.
conclusionEvidence for a common underlying susceptibility to report fatigue symptoms, genetically linked to neuroticism, anxiety-depression, and MS pain, was found. Both unique and pleiotropic effects appear to be involved in the genetic architecture of the phenotypes.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.