Research abstract:

Due to its effect on the central nervous system, brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) has been hypothesized to be involved in a number of neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders. Recently, BDNF was also reported to be significantly lower in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and multiple sclerosis patients, than in healthy controls.

We tried to repeat this observation in 25 patients with CFS matched to 25 healthy controls and 11 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Our study did not find significant differences in BDNF between groups.

Furthermore, we investigated the relationship between BDNF levels and fatigue within CFS sufferers using the fatigue severity score and found no correlation between the two measures.

Our findings act as a caution that results should be replicated in independent laboratories for validation, and we would welcome more research in this area.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor concentration may not be depressed in chronic fatigue syndrome, by David M. Patrick, Ruth R. Miller, Theodore Steiner, Jennifer L. Gardy, Shoshana M. Parker & Patrick Tang in Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior, 27 March 2015 [e-published before print]