Jackson, Melinda L, Bruck, Dorothy · Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2012 · DOI
People with ME/CFS often complain of sleep that doesn't feel refreshing, even when they sleep for normal or long amounts of time. This review looked at research studies measuring sleep in ME/CFS patients and found that standard sleep tests usually don't show obvious differences between patients and healthy people. However, newer, more detailed measurement techniques are beginning to reveal subtle sleep problems that standard tests miss.
Non-restorative sleep is a core diagnostic feature of ME/CFS, yet its cause remains unknown. This review identifies that standard sleep tests may miss the actual problem, suggesting researchers need better tools to find what's really wrong with sleep in ME/CFS. Understanding these sleep mechanisms could lead to targeted treatments and may also help patients with other conditions experiencing similar unrefreshed sleep.
This review does not establish what specifically causes non-restorative sleep in ME/CFS, nor does it prove that the newly emerging techniques will definitively identify the mechanism. It also does not demonstrate that correcting these sleep abnormalities will improve fatigue or other ME/CFS symptoms. The absence of findings in standard sleep tests does not prove abnormalities don't exist—only that current measurement methods may be insufficiently sensitive.
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
Jackson, Melinda L & Bruck, Dorothy (2012). Sleep abnormalities in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis: a review.. Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.2276
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-jackson-2012-sleep-abnormalities,
author = {Jackson, Melinda L and Bruck, Dorothy},
title = {Sleep abnormalities in chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis: a review.},
journal = {Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine},
year = {2012},
doi = {10.5664/jcsm.2276},
note = {PubMed: 23243408},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jackson-2012-sleep-abnormalities},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/jackson-2012-sleep-abnormalities
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