Neu, Daniel, Mairesse, Olivier, Hoffmann, Guy et al. · Neuropsychobiology · 2007 · DOI
ME/CFS patients often report feeling like they have poor sleep quality, even though doctors cannot always find obvious problems when measuring sleep objectively. This study compared how ME/CFS patients and healthy people rated their own sleep quality and found that ME/CFS patients consistently reported worse sleep, despite having similar sleep efficiency measurements. The poor sleep quality perception was somewhat linked to fatigue severity but not related to depression or anxiety symptoms.
Unrefreshing sleep is a defining symptom of ME/CFS, yet the disconnect between how patients feel and what standard sleep tests show remains poorly understood. This study demonstrates that sleep perception problems in ME/CFS are not simply explained by sleep efficiency or architecture, suggesting the need for different measurement approaches and pointing toward potential neurophysiological mechanisms that current standard tests miss.
This study cannot prove that sleep perception problems cause fatigue or other ME/CFS symptoms—only that they correlate. The cross-sectional design prevents establishing causality or temporal relationships. It also does not identify the specific neurophysiological mechanism underlying the sleep quality misperception, only that it exists independently of standard sleep efficiency measures.
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
Neu, Daniel, Mairesse, Olivier, Hoffmann, Guy, Dris, Amirouche, Lambrecht, Luc J, Linkowski, Paul, et al. (2007). Sleep quality perception in the chronic fatigue syndrome: correlations with sleep efficiency, affective symptoms and intensity of fatigue.. Neuropsychobiology. https://doi.org/10.1159/000110727
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-neu-2007-sleep-quality,
author = {Neu, Daniel and Mairesse, Olivier and Hoffmann, Guy and Dris, Amirouche and Lambrecht, Luc J and Linkowski, Paul and Verbanck, Paul and Le Bon, Olivier},
title = {Sleep quality perception in the chronic fatigue syndrome: correlations with sleep efficiency, affective symptoms and intensity of fatigue.},
journal = {Neuropsychobiology},
year = {2007},
doi = {10.1159/000110727},
note = {PubMed: 17986836},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/neu-2007-sleep-quality},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/neu-2007-sleep-quality
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