Higgins, Nicholas, Pickard, John, Lever, Andrew · JRSM short reports · 2013 · DOI
This study looked at whether some people with ME/CFS might actually have a condition called idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH), which involves increased pressure around the brain and spinal cord. The researchers performed lumbar punctures (spinal taps) on ME/CFS patients with headaches and measured the fluid pressure around their spinal cord. They found that some patients improved after the procedure, suggesting a possible link between the two conditions.
This research suggests that elevated intracranial pressure may contribute to symptoms in a subset of ME/CFS patients and that standard diagnostic criteria for IIH may be too stringent for identifying pressure-related pathology in this population. If confirmed, routine ICP screening could identify a treatable cause of ME/CFS symptoms in some patients.
This study does not prove that IIH causes ME/CFS or that it is common in the ME/CFS population, as the sample was small and pre-selected for headache symptoms. The improvement after lumbar puncture does not definitively establish that elevated pressure is the cause of symptoms, and symptomatic improvement from a procedure can be influenced by placebo effects. The study cannot determine the prevalence of IIH in ME/CFS without a larger, unselected patient cohort.
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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