Hoel, August, Hoel, Fredrik, Dyrstad, Sissel Elisabeth et al. · Cell reports. Medicine · 2026 · DOI
Researchers analyzed thousands of proteins in the blood of ME/CFS patients and compared them to healthy people. They found significant differences in protein patterns, including too much of certain immune-related proteins and too little of proteins normally made by muscles. These differences might help explain why ME/CFS causes such severe exhaustion and could eventually lead to new ways to diagnose or treat the condition.
This is one of the first comprehensive proteomics studies to map the blood protein landscape in ME/CFS, offering potential biological markers that could transform diagnosis from symptom-based to biomarker-based. Understanding these protein changes may reveal which biological systems are malfunctioning and guide development of targeted therapies. For patients, validated biomarkers could improve disease recognition and legitimacy in medical settings.
This study shows associations between ME/CFS and specific blood protein patterns, but does not prove these proteins cause the disease or whether they are primary drivers or secondary effects of illness. It is a snapshot in time and cannot establish whether these protein changes occur before symptom onset, persist chronically, or vary with disease activity. The cross-sectional design prevents determination of causality or whether protein normalization would improve clinical outcomes.
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
Hoel, August, Hoel, Fredrik, Dyrstad, Sissel Elisabeth, Chapola, Henrique, Rekeland, Ingrid Gurvin, Risa, Kristin, et al. (2026). Charting the circulating proteome in ME/CFS using cross-system profiling to uncover mechanistic insights.. Cell reports. Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102647
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-hoel-2026-charting-circulating,
author = {Hoel, August and Hoel, Fredrik and Dyrstad, Sissel Elisabeth and Chapola, Henrique and Rekeland, Ingrid Gurvin and Risa, Kristin and Alme, Kine and Sørland, Kari and Brokstad, Karl Albert and Marti, Hans-Peter and Mella, Olav and Fluge, Øystein and Tronstad, Karl Johan},
title = {Charting the circulating proteome in ME/CFS using cross-system profiling to uncover mechanistic insights.},
journal = {Cell reports. Medicine},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.1016/j.xcrm.2026.102647},
note = {PubMed: 41785863},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hoel-2026-charting-circulating},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/hoel-2026-charting-circulating
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