Toogood, Peter L, Clauw, Daniel J, Phadke, Sameer et al. · Pharmacological research · 2021 · DOI
ME/CFS is a serious illness causing extreme fatigue that doesn't improve with rest, along with pain, sleep problems, and difficulty thinking clearly. This review looks at what we currently know about ME/CFS, how doctors diagnose it, and what treatments exist today. The authors examined past research to identify promising targets for new medicines that could help treat ME/CFS in the future.
This review is crucial because it consolidates scattered research on ME/CFS into a comprehensive overview of where new treatments might come from, offering hope for patients currently limited to symptom management. It provides researchers and clinicians with a roadmap of validated targets for drug development, potentially accelerating the discovery of disease-modifying therapies.
This review does not prove that any specific drug treatment is effective—it identifies candidate targets but does not establish clinical efficacy. It does not definitively establish the primary cause of ME/CFS, only highlights immune dysregulation and mitochondrial dysfunction as common features. The heterogeneity of ME/CFS means findings may not apply equally to all 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
Toogood, Peter L, Clauw, Daniel J, Phadke, Sameer, & Hoffman, David (2021). Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS): Where will the drugs come from?. Pharmacological research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phrs.2021.105465
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-toogood-2021-myalgic-encephalomyelitis,
author = {Toogood, Peter L and Clauw, Daniel J and Phadke, Sameer and Hoffman, David},
title = {Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS): Where will the drugs come from?},
journal = {Pharmacological research},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.1016/j.phrs.2021.105465},
note = {PubMed: 33529750},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/toogood-2021-myalgic-encephalomyelitis},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/toogood-2021-myalgic-encephalomyelitis
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.