I had not read the full study and struggle with following the biochemical terminology (something I would have had no problem with pre ME), but this seems an interesting early step in developing objective markers related to fatigue. However, it is important to recognise that fatigue is likely to prove to be much more complicated than the ‘normal’ short lived fatigue experienced by a relatively homogenous subject group in relatively narrow circumstances.
As the article indicates fatigue is a potentially very complex phenomenon; we have no idea how ‘normal’ readily reversible fatigue relates to chronic fatigue experienced in so many different pathologies or if fatigue associated with these different pathologies even approaches being a unitary phenomenon. Also, as illustrated by discussion here, it is very difficult to tie down the variety and variation in fatigue as a subjective experience.
For me this technique is less of interest as a biological indicator of normal fatigue, but as a potential tool to indicate the variation in physiological states associated with the subjective experiences of fatigue, variation between different pathologies and variation over time within individual conditions such as ME.
