van der Meulen, Monica L, Bos, Martje, Bakker, Stephan J L et al. · Journal of psychosomatic research · 2024 · DOI
This study looked at how often three common conditions—ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and irritable bowel syndrome—occur together in the general population. Researchers surveyed nearly 90,000 people and found that these conditions overlap far more often than would happen by pure chance, especially when they last longer and cause more serious symptoms. This suggests these conditions may share common underlying features.
This study provides quantitative evidence that ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and IBS are not independent conditions but share substantial overlap and symptom patterns, which may explain why patients often receive multiple diagnoses. Understanding this overlap could redirect research toward common biological mechanisms and inform more integrated clinical approaches to managing these related conditions.
This study does not establish what causes the overlap between these conditions or whether they share a single underlying disease mechanism. The cross-sectional design cannot determine whether one condition predisposes to another, and questionnaire-based diagnosis without clinical examination may misclassify cases or miss severity distinctions. Correlation between diagnostic criteria does not prove these are variants of one disease rather than separate conditions with shared features.
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 der Meulen, Monica L, Bos, Martje, Bakker, Stephan J L, Gans, Reinold O B, & Rosmalen, Judith G M (2024). Validity and diagnostic overlap of functional somatic syndrome diagnoses.. Journal of psychosomatic research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2024.111673
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-van-der-meulen-2024-validity-diagnostic,
author = {van der Meulen, Monica L and Bos, Martje and Bakker, Stephan J L and Gans, Reinold O B and Rosmalen, Judith G M},
title = {Validity and diagnostic overlap of functional somatic syndrome diagnoses.},
journal = {Journal of psychosomatic research},
year = {2024},
doi = {10.1016/j.jpsychores.2024.111673},
note = {PubMed: 38678828},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-der-meulen-2024-validity-diagnostic},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-29. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/van-der-meulen-2024-validity-diagnostic
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