Young, Joel L, Redmond, Judith C · Psychopharmacology bulletin · 2007
This study looked at patients who came to a psychiatry clinic with ADHD symptoms and also had unexplained tiredness and widespread pain—conditions similar to ME/CFS or fibromyalgia. When doctors treated the ADHD with medication, some patients noticed their fatigue and pain improved along with their attention problems. The researchers suggest this might mean these conditions involve how the brain processes information rather than problems in muscles and joints.
This study suggests an underrecognized overlap between ADHD and ME/CFS/fibromyalgia, and raises the possibility that shared central processing dysfunction may underlie both conditions. For ME/CFS patients with undiagnosed ADHD, this work highlights a potential avenue for symptom management that clinicians should consider.
This case series cannot establish causation or prove ADHD medications are effective treatments for ME/CFS or fibromyalgia—symptom improvement in a few patients does not demonstrate efficacy. The study also does not clarify whether these conditions share a common biological mechanism or are simply comorbid. Individual case reports may reflect placebo effects, natural disease variation, or selection bias rather than true medication effects.
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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