Higgins, Nicholas, Pickard, John, Lever, Andrew · Journal of observational pain medicine · 2013
This study looked at whether some ME/CFS patients with severe headaches might actually have a separate condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH)—increased fluid pressure around the brain. Researchers tested 20 ME/CFS patients with prominent headaches and found that 8 of them had elevated pressure levels, suggesting they had undiagnosed IIH. This raises the possibility that some people diagnosed with ME/CFS might benefit from testing and treatment for this other condition.
ME/CFS patients with headaches represent a significant subgroup that may be suffering from an undiagnosed, treatable condition. If IIH occurs in some ME/CFS patients, targeted diagnostic testing and treatment could improve outcomes. This work highlights the importance of thorough investigation in ME/CFS and the potential overlap between different conditions that present with overlapping symptoms.
This study does not prove that IIH causes ME/CFS or vice versa—elevated pressure and ME/CFS could be coincidental findings. The small sample size, lack of control group, and selection of patients with especially prominent headaches limits generalizability to all ME/CFS patients. The study cannot determine what percentage of the overall ME/CFS population might have undiagnosed IIH.
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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