Gaunt, Daisy, Brigden, Amberly, Metcalfe, Chris et al. · BMJ open · 2023 · DOI
This study followed 193 young people with ME/CFS at a UK NHS specialist service to see how many improved over 6-12 months and what factors predicted improvement. About 40% showed meaningful improvement at 6 months, rising to 54% at 12 months. Interestingly, young people who started with worse physical function scores were actually more likely to show improvement, but very few other patient characteristics predicted who would get better.
Identifying which young people with ME/CFS are likely to improve and understanding how to measure their progress is crucial for personalizing treatment and evaluating service effectiveness. This study challenges whether current standard outcome measures accurately reflect what matters to patients, highlighting a gap in how we assess improvement in pediatric ME/CFS.
This observational study cannot establish causation or identify what treatments or interventions actually caused improvement. The findings also do not prove that psychological factors (anxiety, depression) are unimportant in ME/CFS outcomes—only that they did not predict who reached the MCID threshold on this particular measure. Additionally, the study reflects outcomes at one specialist service and may not generalize to all settings or treatment approaches.
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
Gaunt, Daisy, Brigden, Amberly, Metcalfe, Chris, Loades, Maria, & Crawley, Esther (2023). Investigating the factors associated with meaningful improvement on the SF-36-PFS and exploring the appropriateness of this measure for young people with ME/CFS accessing an NHS specialist service: a prospective cohort study.. BMJ open. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-069110
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-gaunt-2023-investigating-factors,
author = {Gaunt, Daisy and Brigden, Amberly and Metcalfe, Chris and Loades, Maria and Crawley, Esther},
title = {Investigating the factors associated with meaningful improvement on the SF-36-PFS and exploring the appropriateness of this measure for young people with ME/CFS accessing an NHS specialist service: a prospective cohort study.},
journal = {BMJ open},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1136/bmjopen-2022-069110},
note = {PubMed: 37620254},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/gaunt-2023-investigating-factors},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/gaunt-2023-investigating-factors
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