[Chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical hypersensitivity after insecticide exposure].

Background And Objective: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS) are well-defined illnesses that may appear after some toxic exposures.

Patients And Method: We report a consecutive series of 26 patients who developed CFS after exposure to insecticide products. It was associated with MCS in a third of cases.

Results: Toxic exposure was of labour origin after returning to usual work place after a process of fumigation. In 42% of cases there was no fulfilment of fumigation safety rules. The majority of patients were mean-aged women who developed an acute upper airway inflammatory syndrome, without muscarinic or nicotinic manifestations, followed by digestive syndrome, neurocognitive, fibromyalgic and chronic fatigue manifestations. The course of disease was shorter than 1 year in 5 cases (19%), longer than 1 year in 15(58%), and disabling in 6 cases (23%).

Conclusions: Due to the possible prevention of this toxic exposure, it is very important to carefully follow measures of environment isolation and ventilation after insecticide use in order to avoid the development of these diseases.