Maloney, Elizabeth M, Gurbaxani, Brian M, Jones, James F et al. · Pharmacogenomics · 2006 · DOI
This study looked at whether people with ME/CFS have higher "allostatic load"—a measure of how much physical stress the body is under based on things like blood pressure, cortisol levels, and waist-to-hip ratio. Researchers compared 43 ME/CFS patients to 60 healthy people and found that ME/CFS patients were about twice as likely to have high allostatic load. This suggests that ME/CFS may involve ongoing physical stress on the body's systems.
This study provides objective, biomarker-based evidence that ME/CFS involves elevated physiologic strain across multiple body systems—not just fatigue perception. Understanding allostatic load may help explain why ME/CFS patients experience multi-system dysfunction and could guide future therapeutic interventions targeting stress-response dysregulation.
This study does not prove that high allostatic load *causes* ME/CFS or vice versa; it only shows an association. The wide confidence interval (crossing 1.0) means the true effect could be smaller or null, and the modest sample size limits generalizability. The study is cross-sectional and cannot establish temporal relationships or identify which components of allostatic load are primary versus secondary.
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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