Bos, Martje, Monden, Rei, Wray, Naomi R et al. · Psychological medicine · 2025 · DOI
This study looked at whether ME/CFS, irritable bowel syndrome, and fibromyalgia run in families, and whether they share common causes with depression and anxiety disorders. Researchers studied over 150,000 people in the Netherlands and found that these conditions do tend to cluster in families—if a relative has one of these conditions, your risk of having it is higher. ME/CFS showed the strongest family connection and was most closely linked to depression.
This research provides evidence that ME/CFS has a significant heritable and familial component (42% familiality) and is genetically and environmentally linked to psychiatric conditions. Understanding these shared pathways may help explain why ME/CFS and depression co-occur so frequently and could inform more integrated treatment approaches and genetic research strategies.
This study does not prove that genes or family environment *cause* ME/CFS or that psychiatric conditions cause ME/CFS—it only shows they aggregate together in families. The observational design cannot establish the direction or mechanism of causality. Additionally, the findings apply to a Dutch population and may not fully generalize to other ethnic or geographic groups.
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 →
The first block is for the primary paper and is the citation you should use in research work. The atlas-snapshot line only applies if you are specifically referring to this atlas’s reading of the paper on the date shown.
Primary citation
Bos, Martje, Monden, Rei, Wray, Naomi R, Zhou, Yiling, Kendler, Kenneth S, Rosmalen, Judith G M, et al. (2025). Familial coaggregation and shared familiality of functional and internalizing disorders in the Lifelines cohort.. Psychological medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172500100X
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-bos-2025-familial-coaggregation,
author = {Bos, Martje and Monden, Rei and Wray, Naomi R and Zhou, Yiling and Kendler, Kenneth S and Rosmalen, Judith G M and van Loo, Hanna M and Snieder, Harold},
title = {Familial coaggregation and shared familiality of functional and internalizing disorders in the Lifelines cohort.},
journal = {Psychological medicine},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1017/S003329172500100X},
note = {PubMed: 40313134},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bos-2025-familial-coaggregation},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-26. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/bos-2025-familial-coaggregation
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