Comment on: Single fibre EMG studies in chronic fatigue syndrome: a reappraisal. [J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1994]
We were interested in the short report from Roberts and Byrne concerning single fibre EMG studies in chronic fatigue syndrome. They concluded that there was no evidence of abnormality at the terminal axon, neuromuscular junction, or muscle membrane in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome-a finding that concurs with our own of essentially normal jitter in 34 of 35 patients with chronic unexplained fatigue. We did detect some evidence of raised fibre density in a small subgroup of patients with pronounced myalgia who also had mild abnormalities on muscle biopsy.
Raised fibre density is usually a result of collateral sprouting after reinnervation, but can also be due to fibre splitting as can occur in some myopathic states. Therefore we believe that fibre density estimation performed in addition to jitter measurement adds considerably to the information obtained from single fibre EMG studies.
You can read the full comment here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1073160/pdf/jnnpsyc00039-0137a.pdf
Source: Connolly S, Fowler CJ. Single fibre EMG studies in chronic fatigue syndrome: a reappraisal. J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. 1994 Sep;57(9):1157. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1073160/