Petzke, F, Clauw, D J · Current rheumatology reports · 2000 · DOI
This review examines how the sympathetic nervous system—the part that controls your 'fight or flight' stress response—works differently in fibromyalgia patients. Researchers looked at various ways to measure sympathetic function, including heart rate changes, stress hormone levels, and physical responses to stress. The authors also compared findings in fibromyalgia to similar conditions like ME/CFS, irritable bowel syndrome, and migraine to identify common patterns.
This review is significant because autonomic nervous system dysfunction is increasingly recognized as a core pathophysiological feature in ME/CFS, and comparisons with fibromyalgia provide insight into shared mechanisms. Understanding how to properly measure sympathetic function could improve diagnosis and monitoring in ME/CFS, where autonomic symptoms (orthostatic intolerance, heart rate abnormalities, temperature dysregulation) are clinically prominent.
This review does not establish cause-and-effect relationships between sympathetic dysfunction and symptom development, nor does it prove that fibromyalgia and ME/CFS share identical pathophysiology. As a literature review without new experimental data, it cannot validate any specific assessment method or determine which sympathetic abnormalities are primary versus secondary consequences of chronic illness.
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 →
Spotted an error in this entry? Report it →