Li, Koki, Otsuka, Yuki, Nakano, Yasuhiro et al. · Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021 · DOI
This case report describes a young woman who experienced chest pain and worsening ME/CFS symptoms at the same time. Doctors discovered she had angina (reduced blood flow to the heart), which was successfully treated with heart medication. This case highlights that ME/CFS patients experiencing chest pain should be evaluated for actual heart problems, not assume all chest symptoms are from ME/CFS alone.
This case is important because it demonstrates that ME/CFS patients with chest symptoms require cardiac evaluation to rule out concurrent ischemic heart disease, which could otherwise go undiagnosed and lead to serious outcomes. It supports the hypothesis that endothelial dysfunction in ME/CFS may increase cardiovascular risk, potentially explaining the reported 20% of deaths attributed to heart failure in this population.
This case report does not establish how common concurrent angina is in ME/CFS patients, nor does it prove that ME/CFS causes angina. It cannot determine whether the angina and ME/CFS exacerbation were causally related or coincidentally occurred together. The findings apply only to this individual patient and cannot be generalized to the broader ME/CFS population.
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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