ArticleJournal of clinical medicine2023
Serum GDF-15 Levels Accurately Differentiate Patients with Primary Mitochondrial Myopathy, Manifesting with Exercise Intolerance and Fatigue, from Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.
Article in Journal of clinical medicine, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Recent research in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: an evidence map.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2025Pooled it
- Advances in Primary Mitochondrial Diseases: Diagnosis, Natural History Studies and Clinical Trials.Genes · 2026Review
- Baseline Plasma Growth-differentiation Factor 15 and Recovery of Physical Function Following Total Knee Replacement in the Study of Physical Resilience and Aging.The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences · 2026Article
- From Pharmacodynamic Biomarker to Evaluating Treatment Response: Biomarkers in Primary Mitochondrial Diseases.Clinical and translational science · 2026Review
- Delayed Diagnosis of Congenital Myasthenic Syndromes Erroneously Interpreted as Mitochondrial Myopathies.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
12 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Primary mitochondrial myopathies (PMM) are a clinically and genetically highly heterogeneous group that, in some cases, may manifest exclusively as fatigue and exercise intolerance, with minimal or no signs on examination. On these occasions, the symptoms can be confused with the much more common chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Nonetheless, other possibilities must be excluded for the final diagnosis of CFS, with PMM being one of the primary differential diagnoses. For this reason, many patients with CFS undergo extensive studies, including extensive genetic testing and muscle biopsies, to rule out this possibility. This study evaluated the diagnostic performance of growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15) as a potential biomarker to distinguish which patient with chronic fatigue has a mitochondrial disorder. We studied 34 adult patients with symptoms of fatigue and exercise intolerance with a definitive diagnosis of PMM (7), CFS (22), or other non-mitochondrial disorders (5). The results indicate that GDF-15 can accurately discriminate between patients with PMM and CFS (AUC = 0.95) and between PMM and patients with fatigue due to other non-mitochondrial disorders (AUC = 0.94). Therefore, GDF-15 emerges as a promising biomarker to select which patients with fatigue should undergo further studies to exclude mitochondrial disease.
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Registered trials
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