The Neuroscientist : a review journal bringing neurobiology, neurology and psychiatry · 2025 · DOI
This is an editorial piece that reviews what we currently know about ME/CFS and calls for better understanding of the condition. The authors argue that ME/CFS is a real biological illness that deserves serious scientific attention. The piece highlights the need to move past outdated thinking and focus on the actual physical mechanisms causing the disease.
Editorials in peer-reviewed journals shape research priorities and clinical attitudes toward conditions. This piece in a neuroscience journal is important because it legitimizes ME/CFS as worthy of serious neuroscientific investigation and may influence how researchers and funding bodies prioritize ME/CFS research. For patients, this represents advocacy within the scientific community for recognition of ME/CFS as a neurobiological disorder.
As an editorial rather than a research study, this piece does not present original data, conduct experiments, or prove any specific biological mechanism. It expresses perspective and calls for future research rather than establishing causal relationships or definitive facts. The conclusions are argumentative rather than empirical.
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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