Wyller, Vegard Bruun, Sørensen, Øystein, Sulheim, Dag et al. · Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2015 · DOI
This study measured inflammation markers called cytokines in the blood of 120 adolescents with ME/CFS and compared them to 68 healthy young people. Despite CFS patients reporting significantly more fatigue and symptoms suggesting inflammation, the researchers found no differences in cytokine levels or inflammation patterns between the two groups. This suggests that the fatigue and symptoms in adolescent ME/CFS may not be caused by the type of low-grade inflammation in the blood that researchers had previously suspected.
This study challenges a widely held hypothesis that low-grade systemic inflammation drives ME/CFS symptoms in adolescents, potentially redirecting research toward other mechanisms (neurological, metabolic, immunological pathways beyond circulating cytokines). Understanding why symptoms feel inflammatory when biomarkers don't reflect this is crucial for developing targeted treatments for young patients.
This study does not prove inflammation plays no role in ME/CFS—it only shows that standard circulating cytokine measurements are not elevated in adolescent patients at the time of testing. Local tissue inflammation, other immune markers (antibodies, cellular immunity), or cytokine abnormalities at other timepoints are not ruled out. The negative findings also do not explain what actually causes the symptoms patients experience.
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
Wyller, Vegard Bruun, Sørensen, Øystein, Sulheim, Dag, Fagermoen, Even, Ueland, Thor, & Mollnes, Tom Eirik (2015). Plasma cytokine expression in adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome.. Brain, behavior, and immunity. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbi.2014.12.025
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-wyller-2015-plasma-cytokine,
author = {Wyller, Vegard Bruun and Sørensen, Øystein and Sulheim, Dag and Fagermoen, Even and Ueland, Thor and Mollnes, Tom Eirik},
title = {Plasma cytokine expression in adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome.},
journal = {Brain, behavior, and immunity},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.1016/j.bbi.2014.12.025},
note = {PubMed: 25555530},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/wyller-2015-plasma-cytokine},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-30. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/wyller-2015-plasma-cytokine
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