Biomarker Research

The search for reliable biomarkers in ME/CFS has been a central focus of research for decades. The 2024 NIH deep phenotyping study by Walitt et al. represents a landmark contribution to this effort, identifying multiple objective biological abnormalities that distinguish PI-ME/CFS patients from healthy controls (Walitt et al. 2024). This chapter reviews the current state of biomarker research, synthesizes findings across multiple biological domains, and discusses the path toward clinically useful diagnostic and prognostic markers.

Chapter Roadmap: How to Use This Chapter

For patients: read the key-biomarkers-from-the-NIH section to see which objective abnormalities have been documented, and the composite-panels section for how markers may combine into a test.

For caregivers: read the overview-of-biomarker-development and composite-panels sections to understand the state of diagnostic testing.

For clinicians: read the biomarker sections relevant to your practice (metabolomic, immunological, neurological) and the composite-panels section to understand what testing is and is not yet available.

For researchers: read all biomarker sections for the evidence base, the overview-of-biomarker-development for the path to validation, and the composite-panels section for multi-marker approaches.

1 Contents

References

Walitt, Brian, Komudi Singh, Samuel R LaMunion, Mark Hallett, Sandra Jacobson, Kong Chen, Yoshihisa Enose-Akahata, et al. 2024. “Deep Phenotyping of Post-Infectious Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.” Nature Communications 15 (1): 907. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-45107-3.