van Campen, C M C, Rowe, Peter C, Verheugt, Freek W A et al. · Journal of translational medicine · 2020 · DOI
This study compared three different ways to measure physical activity in ME/CFS patients: a questionnaire about daily functioning, a step counter worn during normal activities, and a fitness test measuring oxygen use during exercise. All three methods showed similar patterns—patients with lower scores on one test also tended to have lower scores on the others—but individual patients showed wide variations between the different measurements.
ME/CFS lacks consensus on how to best measure physical decline and treatment response. This study validates that multiple assessment methods (questionnaires, activity monitors, and exercise testing) capture related but complementary information, supporting a more comprehensive approach to evaluating disease severity and monitoring changes over time in clinical and research settings.
This study does not establish causation or explain why individual patients show discrepancies between measures. It also does not evaluate which measurement method is most clinically meaningful or predictive of outcomes, and its findings are limited to female patients, so generalizability to male patients remains unclear.
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
van Campen, C M C, Rowe, Peter C, Verheugt, Freek W A, & Visser, Frans C (2020). Physical activity measures in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: correlations between peak oxygen consumption, the physical functioning scale of the SF-36 questionnaire, and the number of steps from an activity meter.. Journal of translational medicine. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12967-020-02397-7
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-van-campen-2020-physical-activity,
author = {van Campen, C M C and Rowe, Peter C and Verheugt, Freek W A and Visser, Frans C},
title = {Physical activity measures in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: correlations between peak oxygen consumption, the physical functioning scale of the SF-36 questionnaire, and the number of steps from an activity meter.},
journal = {Journal of translational medicine},
year = {2020},
doi = {10.1186/s12967-020-02397-7},
note = {PubMed: 32513266},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-campen-2020-physical-activity},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-25. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-campen-2020-physical-activity
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