Joustra, Monica L, Hartman, Catharina A, Bakker, Stephan J L et al. · Psychosomatic medicine · 2022 · DOI
This study looked at thinking and memory problems in people with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia by testing nearly 80,000 people. Researchers found that people with ME/CFS reported significantly more trouble concentrating and had slightly slower performance on thinking tasks compared to healthy people and those with other diseases like multiple sclerosis. These cognitive complaints remained even when researchers accounted for depression, anxiety, and physical symptom severity.
This large population-based study provides evidence that cognitive impairment in ME/CFS is a real, measurable phenomenon that cannot be fully explained by depression, anxiety, or overall physical symptom burden. Understanding the scope and nature of cognitive dysfunction is essential for validating patient experiences and prioritizing research into the neurobiological mechanisms underlying these symptoms.
This study does not establish whether cognitive dysfunction is a primary feature of ME/CFS or secondary to other disease mechanisms. The cross-sectional design prevents determination of causality or temporal relationships, and the mild objective cognitive deficits measured do not rule out the possibility that more sensitive or disease-specific testing protocols might reveal greater impairment. The study also cannot definitively explain why subjective complaints exceed objective findings.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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