Systematic review and meta-analysis of cognitive impairment in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), 2022, Sebaiti et al

Abstract

Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) is commonly associated with cognitive complaints. To bring out the neuropsychological symptomatology inherent to ME/CFS, we conducted a systematic review according to PRISMA and MOOSE guidelines of the literature through the analysis of 764 studies published between 1988 and 2019 by using PubMed Central website and Clarivate analytics platform.

We performed a meta-analysis to delineate an idea of the neuropsychological profile inherent in ME/CFS. The clinical picture typically affects visuo-spatial immediate memory (g = − 0.55, p = 0.007), reading speed (g = − 0.82, p = 0.0001) and graphics gesture (g = − 0.59, p = 0.0001). Analysis also revealed difficulties in several processes inherent in episodic verbal memory (storage, retrieval, recognition) and visual memory (recovery) and a low efficiency in attentional abilities. Executive functions seemed to be little or not affected and instrumental functions appeared constantly preserved. With regard to the complexity and heterogeneity of the cognitive phenotype, it turns out that determining a sound clinical picture of ME/CFS cognitive profile must go through a neuropsychological examination allowing a complete evaluation integrating the notion of agreement between the choice and the number of tests and the complexity intrinsic to the pathology.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-04764-w

 

Reading speed is a big one. Aside from one time having dropped to zero for several weeks, my reading speed is much less than 1/2 of what it was, not accounting for reading comprehension. Accounting for reading comprehension, for example studying to learn new material, I'd say it's far less than 1/10 and even that doesn't take into account that I could at best handle 1/10 the length of material, so not only is it slower, I can do far less in the same time span even if I wasn't slower at just reading, it's just too much to handle.

But finding little differences in executive reasoning suggests they aren't testing it properly as it's the one thing that is most affected in most people with brain fog. I literally have to plan the day ahead how I will do my lunch the next day, as in I literally have to plan each step in sequence, it's ridiculous. I used to be a programmer able to do this with multiple complex problems at the same time, this is a massive difference and there has to be ways to test this, those tests simply don't exist yet.