Burgard, Harald · International medical case reports journal · 2024 · DOI
This case report describes one woman with ME/CFS for over 15 years who underwent a blood-cleaning treatment called double-filtration apheresis eight times over two years. After treatment, she experienced significant improvement in her fatigue, thinking problems, and other symptoms, with benefits that lasted over time. While this is promising, it is based on just one patient's experience and needs much larger studies to confirm whether this treatment works for others with ME/CFS.
ME/CFS currently lacks approved disease-modifying treatments, making any report of sustained clinical improvement noteworthy for patients and researchers seeking new therapeutic approaches. This case generates a testable hypothesis about apheresis efficacy that could guide future controlled clinical trials, potentially offering hope for patients with severe, treatment-resistant disease.
This study does not prove that apheresis works for ME/CFS broadly—it documents one patient's response without a control group, comparison treatment, or blinding. The improvement could result from natural variation, placebo effects, concurrent lifestyle changes, or other unmeasured factors rather than the treatment itself. Controlled trials with larger patient populations are essential before drawing clinical conclusions.
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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