Dorczok, Marie Celine, Mittmann, Gloria, Mossaheb, Nilufar et al. · Nutrients · 2025 · DOI
This review looked at 14 studies examining whether dietary supplements can help reduce fatigue in ME/CFS patients. Some supplements like L-carnitine, CoQ10 combined with selenium, and NADH showed promise in reducing fatigue symptoms. However, the studies had significant quality issues, making it difficult to draw firm conclusions about which supplements truly work.
This review is important because many ME/CFS patients use dietary supplements for fatigue management despite limited evidence. By synthesizing available research and identifying which supplements show the most promise, it helps patients and clinicians make more informed decisions about supplement use while highlighting the urgent need for higher-quality research in this population.
This review does not definitively prove that any supplement effectively treats ME/CFS fatigue due to methodological limitations including small sample sizes, missing data, and selection bias in included studies. The findings suggest potential rather than established efficacy, and individual supplement effects cannot be reliably distinguished from placebo effects without better-designed trials. Adverse effects were reported in some studies but remain incompletely characterized.
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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Primary citation
Dorczok, Marie Celine, Mittmann, Gloria, Mossaheb, Nilufar, Schrank, Beate, Bartova, Lucie, Neumann, Matthias, et al. (2025). Dietary Supplementation for Fatigue Symptoms in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)-A Systematic Review.. Nutrients. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu17030475
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-dorczok-2025-dietary-supplementation,
author = {Dorczok, Marie Celine and Mittmann, Gloria and Mossaheb, Nilufar and Schrank, Beate and Bartova, Lucie and Neumann, Matthias and Steiner-Hofbauer, Verena},
title = {Dietary Supplementation for Fatigue Symptoms in Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)-A Systematic Review.},
journal = {Nutrients},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.3390/nu17030475},
note = {PubMed: 39940333},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/dorczok-2025-dietary-supplementation},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/dorczok-2025-dietary-supplementation
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