Yang, Claire C, Miller, Jane L, Omidpanah, Adam et al. · Urology · 2018 · DOI
This study looked at physical examination findings in people with chronic pelvic pain to see if doctors could identify characteristic patterns. Researchers examined 62 people with pelvic pain and compared them to 42 people with chronic fatigue syndrome and 39 healthy people. They found that people with pelvic pain were much more likely to have tender muscles in the pelvic floor area, and a special extended examination could help identify which specific areas were affected.
Many ME/CFS patients experience concurrent or related chronic pelvic pain, and this study demonstrates that standardized physical examination protocols can reliably identify pelvic floor dysfunction patterns. Understanding these physical examination findings may help clinicians better subtype and manage chronic pain conditions that overlap with ME/CFS, potentially improving treatment outcomes through more precise phenotyping.
This cross-sectional study cannot establish causation or explain why pelvic floor tenderness develops. The study does not determine whether pelvic floor dysfunction causes systemic symptoms, results from them, or represents a distinct but co-occurring condition. Additionally, findings cannot be generalized beyond the specific study population and do not address whether these physical examination findings predict treatment response.
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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