Nijs, Jo, De Meirleir, Kenny · Clinical rehabilitation · 2004 · DOI
This study looked for a simple way to predict how much oxygen someone with ME/CFS can use during exercise (called VO2peak), which is a measure of exercise capacity. Researchers tested 240 ME/CFS patients on exercise bikes and found that by measuring the maximum workload a patient could achieve, they could estimate their oxygen use fairly accurately with a simple calculation.
Predicting oxygen uptake capacity in ME/CFS patients is important because exercise intolerance is a core symptom, yet cardiopulmonary exercise testing can be burdensome and expensive for patients. This simple, low-cost prediction method could help clinicians and researchers more easily assess functional capacity and track disease changes over time in ME/CFS populations.
This study does not prove what causes the reduced exercise capacity in ME/CFS or whether the prediction equation is valid in other patient populations. It is a correlational study in a specific population and does not establish whether exercise testing itself causes post-exertional malaise or permanent changes in ME/CFS patients.
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
Nijs, Jo & De Meirleir, Kenny (2004). Prediction of peak oxygen uptake in patients fulfilling the 1994 CDC criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome.. Clinical rehabilitation. https://doi.org/10.1191/0269215504cr751oa
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-nijs-2004-prediction-peak,
author = {Nijs, Jo and De Meirleir, Kenny},
title = {Prediction of peak oxygen uptake in patients fulfilling the 1994 CDC criteria for chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {Clinical rehabilitation},
year = {2004},
doi = {10.1191/0269215504cr751oa},
note = {PubMed: 15573835},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/nijs-2004-prediction-peak},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/nijs-2004-prediction-peak
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