More and more children and adolescents have daily functional somatic symptoms, i.e. physical symptoms that cannot be explained by a well-defined physical illness. These can be overwhelming fatigue, headaches, abdominal pain, pain elsewhere in the body, sensory disturbances or cramps. For most people, the symptoms are transient, but a small group develop long-term symptoms that lead to school absence and reduced quality of life.
As one of the first in the world, the CCC2000 has systematically studied the full range of functional symptoms from preschool age.
In the 5-7-year study, we found that functional symptoms are a significant health problem in about 4% of children, with functional impairment in daily life, many medical visits and treatment with pain medication.
In the 11-12-year follow-up, we focused on a detailed study of health anxiety, which was previously thought to occur primarily in adults. The study showed both that children can have significant health anxiety and that there is also a clear correlation between children's self-reported health anxiety and their use of healthcare services. The results are thus comparable to the findings seen in adults with health anxiety.
Taken together, these results suggest that both functional symptoms and health anxiety are important issues from early childhood.
However, we still know very little about specific risk mechanisms for the development of these symptoms, including associations with perceived stress and the developmental perspective.
In CCC2000, the exploration of risk mechanisms for bodily distress with functional somatic symptoms and health anxiety includes the study of exposure to stress over time, and stress-related measures, as performed in 16-17-years follow-up by measuring stress hormone (cortisol) in hair.
In the long term, the exploration of functional somatic symptoms and health anxiety in CCC2000 will contribute to the development of better and more effective prevention of severe functional disorders and problems with recurrent or perhaps chronic health anxiety in adult life.
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Main research leader: Charlotte Ulrikka Rask