Lacasa, Marcos, Launois, Patricia, Prados, Ferran et al. · Clinical therapeutics · 2023 · DOI
This study examined whether oxygen consumption during an exercise test could help identify different types of ME/CFS patients. Researchers used questionnaire responses from 2,347 ME/CFS patients and then tested their findings in 92 patients who completed an exercise test. They found that patient responses on a quality-of-life survey directly matched up with how much oxygen their bodies could use during exercise, suggesting that low oxygen consumption may be a useful marker for identifying ME/CFS severity.
ME/CFS lacks objective diagnostic markers, making it difficult to track disease progression or evaluate new treatments. This study suggests that a simple quality-of-life questionnaire could potentially predict oxygen consumption capacity—a measurable physiological indicator—offering a practical tool for classifying patient severity and monitoring outcomes in clinical practice and research.
This study does not establish that SF-36 scores cause changes in oxygen consumption, only that they are associated. It does not prove that oxygen consumption is a reliable diagnostic biomarker across all ME/CFS populations, since the validation sample was small and may not represent the broader patient population. The findings also do not demonstrate that this approach can predict individual patient prognosis or guide treatment decisions.
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
Lacasa, Marcos, Launois, Patricia, Prados, Ferran, Alegre, José, & Casas-Roma, Jordi (2023). Unsupervised Cluster Analysis Reveals Distinct Subtypes of ME/CFS Patients Based on Peak Oxygen Consumption and SF-36 Scores.. Clinical therapeutics. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinthera.2023.09.007
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-lacasa-2023-unsupervised-cluster,
author = {Lacasa, Marcos and Launois, Patricia and Prados, Ferran and Alegre, José and Casas-Roma, Jordi},
title = {Unsupervised Cluster Analysis Reveals Distinct Subtypes of ME/CFS Patients Based on Peak Oxygen Consumption and SF-36 Scores.},
journal = {Clinical therapeutics},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1016/j.clinthera.2023.09.007},
note = {PubMed: 37802746},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lacasa-2023-unsupervised-cluster},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/lacasa-2023-unsupervised-cluster
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