Van Den Houte, Maaike, Bogaerts, Katleen, Van Diest, Ilse et al. · Journal of psychosomatic research · 2018 · DOI
This study tested how people with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia perceive breathlessness compared to healthy people. Participants breathed into a machine that gradually increased CO2 levels while researchers measured both their physical responses and what they reported feeling. The main finding was that ME/CFS and fibromyalgia patients reported more breathlessness during the recovery phase (after the test ended) than healthy controls, even though their actual physical responses were similar.
Understanding how ME/CFS patients perceive physical sensations differently from healthy people is crucial for developing better diagnostic and treatment approaches. This study suggests that distorted symptom perception is a common mechanism across functional somatic syndromes, which could help explain why ME/CFS symptoms feel more severe than objective physical measures sometimes indicate.
This study does not prove that ME/CFS is psychological in nature or that symptoms are 'imagined'—it demonstrates altered perception, not fabrication. The findings are correlational and cannot establish whether distorted perception causes symptom severity or results from it. The study also does not address whether this perception pattern is reversible or how it relates to other ME/CFS mechanisms like post-exertional malaise.
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 Den Houte, Maaike, Bogaerts, Katleen, Van Diest, Ilse, De Bie, Jozef, Persoons, Philippe, Van Oudenhove, Lukas, et al. (2018). Perception of induced dyspnea in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.. Journal of psychosomatic research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2018.01.007
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-van-den-houte-2018-perception-induced,
author = {Van Den Houte, Maaike and Bogaerts, Katleen and Van Diest, Ilse and De Bie, Jozef and Persoons, Philippe and Van Oudenhove, Lukas and Van den Bergh, Omer},
title = {Perception of induced dyspnea in fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {Journal of psychosomatic research},
year = {2018},
doi = {10.1016/j.jpsychores.2018.01.007},
note = {PubMed: 29455899},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-den-houte-2018-perception-induced},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-den-houte-2018-perception-induced
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