Abstract:
It has been shown previously that some patients with chronic fatigue syndrome show an abnormal increase in plasma lactate following a short period of moderate exercise, in the sub-anaerobic threshold exercise test (SATET).
This cannot be explained satisfactorily by the effects of ‘inactivity’ or ‘deconditioning’, and patients with abnormal lactate responses to exercise (SATET +ve) have been found to have significantly fewer Type 1 muscle fibres in quadriceps biopsies than SATET -ve patients. We performed phosphorus magnetic resonance spectroscopy on forearm muscles of 10 SATET +ve patients, 9 SATET -ve patients and 13 sedentary volunteers.
There were no differences in resting spectra between these groups but at the end of exercise, intracellular pH in the SATET +ve patients was significantly lower than in both the SATET -ve cases and controls (P < 0.03), and the SATET +ve patients also showed a significantly lower ATP synthesis rate during recovery (P < 0.01), indicating impaired mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation.
These observations support other evidence which indicates that chronic fatigue syndrome is a heterogeneous disorder, and confirms the view that some chronic fatigue syndrome patients have a peripheral component to their fatigue.
Source: Lane RJ, Barrett MC, Taylor DJ, Kemp GJ, Lodi R. Heterogeneity in chronic fatigue syndrome: evidence from magnetic resonance spectroscopy of muscle. Neuromuscul Disord. 1998 May;8(3-4):204-9. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9631403