Hinchado, María Dolores, Quero-Calero, Carmen Daniela, Otero, Eduardo et al. · Nutrients · 2023 · DOI
This study tested whether a probiotic supplement (containing beneficial bacteria) could help women with fibromyalgia, especially those who also had ME/CFS. After one month of taking the supplement, participants reported feeling less stressed, anxious, and depressed, and their quality of life improved. The supplement also appeared to help their body's stress response system work better.
Many ME/CFS patients experience overlapping fibromyalgia symptoms and lack effective treatments beyond symptom management. If synbiotics can improve immune dysregulation and stress-response abnormalities—both hallmark features of ME/CFS—this represents a potential low-risk intervention worth further investigation in dedicated ME/CFS populations.
This study does not prove synbiotics are effective as a standalone treatment for ME/CFS; it examined mostly fibromyalgia patients with optional CFS codiagnosis, so findings may not generalize to primary ME/CFS. The observational design without placebo control cannot exclude placebo effects or confounding factors. One month is too short to determine long-term safety or sustained efficacy.
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
Hinchado, María Dolores, Quero-Calero, Carmen Daniela, Otero, Eduardo, Gálvez, Isabel, & Ortega, Eduardo (2023). Synbiotic Supplementation Improves Quality of Life and Inmunoneuroendocrine Response in Patients with Fibromyalgia: Influence of Codiagnosis with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.. Nutrients. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15071591
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hinchado-2023-synbiotic-supplementation,
author = {Hinchado, María Dolores and Quero-Calero, Carmen Daniela and Otero, Eduardo and Gálvez, Isabel and Ortega, Eduardo},
title = {Synbiotic Supplementation Improves Quality of Life and Inmunoneuroendocrine Response in Patients with Fibromyalgia: Influence of Codiagnosis with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.},
journal = {Nutrients},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.3390/nu15071591},
note = {PubMed: 37049432},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hinchado-2023-synbiotic-supplementation},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hinchado-2023-synbiotic-supplementation
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.