Collin, Simon M, Crawley, Esther · BMC health services research · 2017 · DOI
This study looked at how 952 ME/CFS patients fared after receiving treatment at 11 specialist NHS clinics in England. One year after starting treatment, about 27% felt much better, 37% felt a little better, but 20% felt the same or worse. Even 2-5 years later, 85% of patients still had ME/CFS symptoms, showing that this is a long-lasting condition that often continues despite specialist care.
This is one of the largest NHS-based longitudinal studies of specialist ME/CFS care in England, providing real-world evidence about outcomes across multiple services. It demonstrates that while some patients improve with specialist treatment, ME/CFS typically persists as a chronic condition, informing patient expectations and highlighting the need for more effective interventions and better understanding of treatment response predictors.
This study does not prove that specialist treatment causes the observed improvements, as there is no untreated control group and no blinding. It cannot establish which specific treatment elements are most effective because services used varied protocols. The study also cannot explain why treatment responses differ between individuals or identify predictors of who will improve.
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
Collin, Simon M & Crawley, Esther (2017). Specialist treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome/ME: a cohort study among adult patients in England.. BMC health services research. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-017-2437-3
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-collin-2017-specialist-treatment,
author = {Collin, Simon M and Crawley, Esther},
title = {Specialist treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome/ME: a cohort study among adult patients in England.},
journal = {BMC health services research},
year = {2017},
doi = {10.1186/s12913-017-2437-3},
note = {PubMed: 28709432},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/collin-2017-specialist-treatment},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/collin-2017-specialist-treatment
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