Is chronic fatigue syndrome associated with platelet activation? — non-technical summary
Platelets are small cells in the blood which are important in wound healing. When tissue is damaged, platelets stick together around the injury forming a clot to prevent further blood loss. This is called coagulation. However, in some conditions (such as pulmonary embolism) clots can form inappropriately, blocking the blood vessel. Some studies have suggested that the platelets of people with ME/CFS are prone to this.
However, we found that patients with ME/CFS actually tended to have fewer platelets than healthy controls, and these were no more prone to coagulation than normal. Therefore, there seems to be no reason to treat ME/CFS patients with anti-platelet drugs.
These findings contrast with those of previous studies, but may have been due to differences in patient selection and in the conduct of the experiments.
