Smith, Mark S, Buchwald, Dedra S, Bogart, Andy et al. · The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine · 2010 · DOI
This study looked at whether teenagers whose mothers have ME/CFS are more likely to develop ME/CFS themselves or experience fatigue and other related symptoms. Researchers compared 26 teenagers with mothers who had ME/CFS to 45 teenagers whose mothers were healthy. While teenagers with affected mothers showed higher rates of prolonged fatigue and ME/CFS diagnosis, the differences were small and not statistically proven.
Understanding whether ME/CFS runs in families and whether children of affected mothers show early biomarkers could help identify at-risk individuals and elucidate disease mechanisms. This study addresses an important gap regarding familial clustering and the relative contributions of genetic versus environmental factors in ME/CFS development.
This study does not prove that ME/CFS is inherited or that maternal disease directly causes illness in offspring, as findings were not statistically significant and the cross-sectional design cannot establish causation. The lack of difference in current symptom measures between offspring groups contradicts a simple genetic or direct transmission model, and alternative explanations such as shared environment, reporting bias, or maternal psychosocial influence cannot be ruled out.
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
Smith, Mark S, Buchwald, Dedra S, Bogart, Andy, Goldberg, Jack, Smith, Wayne R, & Afari, Niloofar (2010). Adolescent offspring of mothers with chronic fatigue syndrome.. The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.08.001
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-smith-2010-adolescent-offspring,
author = {Smith, Mark S and Buchwald, Dedra S and Bogart, Andy and Goldberg, Jack and Smith, Wayne R and Afari, Niloofar},
title = {Adolescent offspring of mothers with chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine},
year = {2010},
doi = {10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.08.001},
note = {PubMed: 20159507},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/smith-2010-adolescent-offspring},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-27. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/smith-2010-adolescent-offspring
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.