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Cortisol in hair Hair and salivary cortisol in a cohort of women with chronic fatigue syndrome, 2018, Roerink et al This more recent one is from Knoop's team People with CFS and the healthy controls didn't have statistically different cortisol levels in saliva throughout the day or in hair...

Review of early studies The neuroendocrinology of chronic fatigue syndrome, 2003, Cleare Cleare, who was a coauthor of the Roberts paper above, had earlier done this review of the evidence relating to HPA axis dysfunction in CFS. Cleare notes: He must have been disappointed with the outcome...

Forestglip notes about this review:

Abstract Many studies of patients with long-standing chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) have found alterations to the hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, including mild hypocortisolism, heightened negative feedback and blunted responses to challenge. However, recent prospective studies of...

Abstract Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a common and disabling problem; although most likely of biopsychosocial origin, the nature of the pathophysiological components remains unclear. There has been a wealth of interest in the endocrinology of this condition, which will be reviewed in this...

The thread I mentioned: How to write a good introduction for an ME/CFS paper?

You got it into the BMJ, congratulations. I assume it is then easier to get your subsequent papers into that journal? Formulaic but accurate is fine by me. @Ravn had some good comments somewhere, arising from some discussion about a recent paper from Ponting's team. We concluded that short is...

I've started jotting down my thoughts and summaries of forum analyses of papers relevant to the 'cortisol in ME/CFS' question here: Cortisol levels in ME/CFS

Cleare is one of the authors of this 2008 paper, the senior author. This paper quotes him liberally as having found that cortisol is low in CFS (see, for example the quotes in post #14 above). That provides one reason for the 2008 paper to not report that actually their sample had normal...

Early studies Salivary cortisol output before and after cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome, 2008, Roberts That was a study I had not looked at until now. I'm constantly amazed at how bad these studies are. Wesseley and Chalder were co-authors. The hypothesis was 'we know...

Then there is the finding that the CBT increase was higher in the people who were assessed by therapists unaware of the cortisol levels as having not responded to the CBT! The non-responders' total day-time cortisol increased from 65.2 to 78.0, i.e. about 13 The responders' total day-time...

The discussion is full of references to that fact that CFS involves hypocortisolism. I'm pretty astounded that nowhere do they actually acknowledge that their sample of CFS patients had normal cortisol levels for sedentary adults. Nowhere do they note what normal cortisol ranges look like...

I'm trying to work out if the levels of cortisol recorded were abnormal. AI tells me The normal range for salivary cortisol in adults in the morning is 5–46 nmol/L, and it's usually measured between 8–9 AM. A normal late-night salivary cortisol level, e.g. 11 pm is 2.6–3.2 nmol/L. The...

Results of the CBT : Clinical Global Impression (assessed by therapist) Very much or much improved 18 (47%) Minimally improved 13 (34%) No change 4 (11%) Minimally, much or very much worse 3 (8%) Missing data 3 (8%) Note the lumping the negative outcomes together. We don't know how many people...

The Kings College London link in the first post doesn't seem to work anymore. Here's another link to an In Press version https://www.simonwessely.com/Downloads/Publications/CFS/192.pdf Journal of Affective Disorders Amanda Roberts, Andrew Papadopoulos, Simon Wessely, Trudie Chalder, Anthony Cleare

Early studies Melatonin Levels in Women with Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, 1999, Korszun et al This was a tiny study, but it found no evidence of abnormal levels of cortisol (or melatonin) in a small sample of women with CFS. Small adrenal glands in chronic fatigue syndrome: a...

Low cortisol or otherwise abnormal cortisol comes up frequently in the ME/CFS literature. Many researchers and clinician have been convinced that ME/CFS is the result of managing stress poorly and that it's all about a HPA axis (Hypothalamus, Pituitary and Adrenal Gland axis) problem. They have...