Schacterle, Richard S, Komaroff, Anthony L · Archives of internal medicine · 2004 · DOI
This study surveyed 86 women with ME/CFS about their pregnancies before and after developing the illness. During pregnancy, about 4 in 10 women had no change in symptoms, 3 in 10 improved, and 3 in 10 worsened. The study found that pregnancy itself did not consistently make ME/CFS worse, and most pregnancy outcomes were similar whether the illness was present or not, though miscarriage rates were higher in pregnancies after ME/CFS onset.
Many women with ME/CFS delay or avoid pregnancy due to concerns about disease progression and fetal harm. This study provides direct patient-reported data suggesting pregnancy outcomes are generally reassuring, though specific risks (miscarriage, childhood developmental delays) warrant further investigation. Understanding these risks helps women with ME/CFS make informed reproductive decisions.
This study does not prove that ME/CFS causes miscarriage or developmental delays—only that they occurred more frequently in the post-CFS pregnancy group, which could reflect unmeasured confounders like maternal age or disease severity rather than causation. The cross-sectional, retrospective design relies on recall and lacks a matched control population. Findings do not establish safe or unsafe thresholds for pregnancy in 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
Schacterle, Richard S & Komaroff, Anthony L (2004). A comparison of pregnancies that occur before and after the onset of chronic fatigue syndrome.. Archives of internal medicine. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.164.4.401
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-schacterle-2004-comparison-pregnancies,
author = {Schacterle, Richard S and Komaroff, Anthony L},
title = {A comparison of pregnancies that occur before and after the onset of chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {Archives of internal medicine},
year = {2004},
doi = {10.1001/archinte.164.4.401},
note = {PubMed: 14980991},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/schacterle-2004-comparison-pregnancies},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/schacterle-2004-comparison-pregnancies
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.