Xiong, Ruoyun, Gunter, Courtney, Fleming, Elizabeth et al. · Cell host & microbe · 2023 · DOI
Researchers studied the gut bacteria and blood chemicals of people with ME/CFS to understand how the disease affects the body. They compared three groups: people with ME/CFS for less than 4 years, people who've had it for over 10 years, and healthy people without the disease. They found that early ME/CFS patients have significant changes in their gut bacteria, while long-term patients' bacteria had mostly normalized, but their blood chemistry and symptoms remained abnormal.
This research provides evidence that ME/CFS involves measurable changes in gut bacteria and blood chemistry, offering potential biomarkers that could help diagnose and monitor disease progression. Understanding how these microbial and metabolic changes relate to ME/CFS symptoms may eventually lead to targeted treatments.
This study does not prove that gut bacteria changes cause ME/CFS or that restoring bacteria will cure the disease—it only shows associations. The cross-sectional design means we cannot determine whether these changes precede symptom onset or result from the disease itself. Nor does it establish whether the metabolic abnormalities in long-term patients are irreversible or could be therapeutically addressed.
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
Xiong, Ruoyun, Gunter, Courtney, Fleming, Elizabeth, Vernon, Suzanne D, Bateman, Lucinda, Unutmaz, Derya, et al. (2023). Multi-'omics of gut microbiome-host interactions in short- and long-term myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients.. Cell host & microbe. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2023.01.001
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-xiong-2023-multi-omics,
author = {Xiong, Ruoyun and Gunter, Courtney and Fleming, Elizabeth and Vernon, Suzanne D and Bateman, Lucinda and Unutmaz, Derya and Oh, Julia},
title = {Multi-'omics of gut microbiome-host interactions in short- and long-term myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome patients.},
journal = {Cell host & microbe},
year = {2023},
doi = {10.1016/j.chom.2023.01.001},
note = {PubMed: 36758521},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/xiong-2023-multi-omics},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-28. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/xiong-2023-multi-omics
Contribute
Private, reviewed by a human. Not a public comment thread.