Xu, Meng-Que, Cao, Hai-Long, Wang, Wei-Qiang et al. · World journal of gastroenterology · 2015 · DOI
This review explores how fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT)—transferring healthy gut bacteria from donors to patients—might help treat conditions beyond intestinal diseases, including chronic fatigue syndrome. The authors found that FMT has shown promise in improving insulin sensitivity in metabolic disease and has produced favorable results in case reports of patients with Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, and chronic fatigue syndrome, suggesting that gut bacteria imbalance may contribute to these conditions.
For ME/CFS patients and researchers, this review is significant because it identifies dysbiosis as a potential therapeutic target and presents a case report suggesting FMT may benefit chronic fatigue syndrome. Understanding the role of gut microbiota in ME/CFS could open new treatment avenues and legitimize microbiota-directed interventions as an area for rigorous clinical investigation.
This review does not prove that FMT is effective for ME/CFS, as the evidence consists only of case reports without controls, blinding, or standardized outcome measures. The study does not establish causality between dysbiosis and ME/CFS symptoms, nor does it demonstrate that FMT outcomes in other conditions (metabolic syndrome, Parkinson's disease) will translate to ME/CFS populations. Cross-disease comparisons may not reflect disease-specific microbiota-symptom relationships.
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
Xu, Meng-Que, Cao, Hai-Long, Wang, Wei-Qiang, Wang, Shan, Cao, Xiao-Cang, Yan, Fang, et al. (2015). Fecal microbiota transplantation broadening its application beyond intestinal disorders.. World journal of gastroenterology. https://doi.org/10.3748/wjg.v21.i1.102
BibTeX
@article{mecfsatlas-xu-2015-fecal-microbiota,
author = {Xu, Meng-Que and Cao, Hai-Long and Wang, Wei-Qiang and Wang, Shan and Cao, Xiao-Cang and Yan, Fang and Wang, Bang-Mao},
title = {Fecal microbiota transplantation broadening its application beyond intestinal disorders.},
journal = {World journal of gastroenterology},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.3748/wjg.v21.i1.102},
note = {PubMed: 25574083},
url = {https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/xu-2015-fecal-microbiota},
}Atlas snapshot reference
ME/CFS Atlas. Generator v1 / Scanner v1.4 / policy v0.1. Accessed 2026-05-26. https://www.mecfsatlas.com/evidence/xu-2015-fecal-microbiota
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