Riedl, Andrea, Schmidtmann, Marco, Stengel, Andreas et al. · Journal of psychosomatic research · 2008 · DOI
This study looked at other health conditions that commonly occur alongside irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Researchers found that people with IBS are twice as likely to have other physical health problems compared to people without IBS. Conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and chronic pelvic pain appear in up to 65% of IBS patients, and digestive problems occur in about half of them.
This study is highly relevant to ME/CFS research because chronic fatigue syndrome is specifically identified as a major extraintestinal comorbidity in IBS (appearing in up to 65% of patients), suggesting significant overlap between these conditions. Understanding shared pathophysiological mechanisms between IBS and ME/CFS could inform treatment approaches and help identify patient subgroups with specific therapeutic needs.
This systematic review does not establish causation or unified pathophysiology—only documented associations between conditions. The study cannot determine whether comorbidities arise from a common biological mechanism, result from overlapping symptom reporting, or are genuinely distinct conditions occurring together. It also does not prove that treating one condition will resolve the others.
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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