Meeus, Mira, Roussel, Nathalie A, Truijen, Steven et al. · Journal of rehabilitation medicine · 2010 · DOI
This study compared how people with ME/CFS, chronic back pain, and healthy people respond to exercise. Researchers found that people with ME/CFS have more sensitive pain responses than others, and importantly, their pain sensitivity got worse after light exercise—opposite to what happened in the other groups. This suggests ME/CFS involves different pain processing in the nervous system.
This study provides objective evidence for abnormal pain processing in ME/CFS, particularly during and after exertion—a hallmark feature of post-exertional malaise. Understanding the neurobiological basis of exercise-induced pain worsening may help validate ME/CFS as a distinct condition and guide development of targeted treatments.
This study does not prove nitric oxide dysfunction causes ME/CFS pain sensitivity, nor does it identify the actual mechanism driving post-exercise hyperalgesia. It is observational and mechanistic only; findings in this small sample may not generalize to all ME/CFS populations. The cross-sectional design cannot establish whether abnormal pain processing is a cause or consequence of ME/CFS.
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
Meeus, Mira, Roussel, Nathalie A, Truijen, Steven, & Nijs, Jo (2010). Reduced pressure pain thresholds in response to exercise in chronic fatigue syndrome but not in chronic low back pain: an experimental study.. Journal of rehabilitation medicine. https://doi.org/10.2340/16501977-0595
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-meeus-2010-reduced-pressure,
author = {Meeus, Mira and Roussel, Nathalie A and Truijen, Steven and Nijs, Jo},
title = {Reduced pressure pain thresholds in response to exercise in chronic fatigue syndrome but not in chronic low back pain: an experimental study.},
journal = {Journal of rehabilitation medicine},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.2340/16501977-0595},
note = {PubMed: 20878051},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/meeus-2010-reduced-pressure},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/meeus-2010-reduced-pressure
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