Margutti, Paola, Delunardo, Federica, Ortona, Elena · Current neurovascular research · 2006 · DOI
This review examines evidence that the immune system can sometimes produce antibodies that attack the brain and blood vessels, potentially causing psychiatric symptoms like depression, anxiety, and psychosis. The authors discuss how this autoimmune mechanism may occur in several conditions, including chronic fatigue syndrome, and review what we know about antibodies in psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia and autism.
This review is significant for ME/CFS patients because it explicitly includes chronic fatigue syndrome among conditions where autoantibodies may play a pathogenic role in psychiatric symptoms. For researchers, it synthesizes cross-disciplinary evidence suggesting that neuropsychiatric manifestations in ME/CFS may have an autoimmune basis, potentially opening new therapeutic avenues beyond purely neurological or psychiatric treatment approaches.
This review does not establish causation—it describes associations between autoantibodies and psychiatric symptoms. It does not prove that autoantibodies are the primary cause of psychiatric disorders or that all psychiatric symptoms in these conditions result from autoimmunity. The narrative format means findings are selectively presented and not systematically ranked by quality of evidence.
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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