Prylińska-Jaśkowiak, Monika, Tabisz, Hanna, Kujawski, Sławomir et al. · Scientific reports · 2025 · DOI
Researchers compared the bacteria living in the gut of people with ME/CFS to healthy people and found clear differences. People with ME/CFS had less diverse bacterial communities and different types of bacteria overall. A computer program could accurately tell the difference between ME/CFS and healthy people just by looking at their gut bacteria patterns, suggesting this difference might be important for the illness.
Identifying consistent microbiota differences between ME/CFS patients and healthy controls provides objective biological markers that could support diagnosis and suggests the gut microbiome may be involved in disease pathogenesis. This opens new avenues for investigating whether modifying gut bacteria could be therapeutic for ME/CFS patients.
This study does not prove that gut bacteria changes cause ME/CFS—the differences observed could be consequences of the illness rather than causes. The study also does not establish whether these microbiota differences are clinically relevant, treatable, or present in all ME/CFS populations, as only a small group was studied. Correlation between microbial patterns and clinical symptoms was not examined.
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
Prylińska-Jaśkowiak, Monika, Tabisz, Hanna, Kujawski, Sławomir, Godlewska, Beata R, Słomko, Joanna, Januszko-Giergielewicz, Beata, et al. (2025). The gut microbial composition is different in chronic fatigue syndrome than in healthy controls.. Scientific reports. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-16438-y
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-pryliska-jakowiak-2025-gut-microbial,
author = {Prylińska-Jaśkowiak, Monika and Tabisz, Hanna and Kujawski, Sławomir and Godlewska, Beata R and Słomko, Joanna and Januszko-Giergielewicz, Beata and Murovska, Modra and Morten, Karl J and Sokołowski, Łukasz and Zalewski, Paweł},
title = {The gut microbial composition is different in chronic fatigue syndrome than in healthy controls.},
journal = {Scientific reports},
year = {2025},
doi = {10.1038/s41598-025-16438-y},
note = {PubMed: 41006438},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/pryliska-jakowiak-2025-gut-microbial},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/pryliska-jakowiak-2025-gut-microbial
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