Nederhof, Esther, Lemmink, Koen A P M, Visscher, Chris et al. · Sports medicine (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2006 · DOI
This study proposes that measuring how quickly someone can respond to mental tasks (psychomotor speed) might help identify athletes who are overtraining before serious problems develop. The researchers noticed that overtraining syndrome shares some features with chronic fatigue syndrome and depression, both of which involve slowed mental processing, and suggest this slowness could be an early warning sign.
This research is relevant to ME/CFS because it identifies psychomotor slowing as a consistent feature across conditions with similar underlying mechanisms—potentially including ME/CFS itself. If psychomotor speed proves to be a reliable marker, it could provide an objective test to identify post-exertional malaise and disease severity in ME/CFS patients, moving beyond subjective symptom reporting.
This study does not definitively prove that psychomotor speed is actually impaired in OTS patients—it is a theoretical proposal supported by analogy to other conditions. The study does not establish causation or demonstrate that psychomotor testing is feasible or valid in real athletic or clinical settings. It does not provide evidence that psychomotor speed changes precede symptom onset or that interventions targeting it would prevent OTS.
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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