Oxidative phosphorylation

The oxidative phosphorylation or OXPHOS or OX-PHOS pathway, along with glycolysis are the two main energy-generating mitochondrial pathways.

Function
The oxidative phosphorylation pathway produces more than 95% of a cell's energy in the form of ATP. This is done by the mitochondria, in a process called chemiosmosis.

ME/CFS
Vermeulen et al. (2010) conducted a small controlled trial of 15 female patients who performed a two-day cardiopulmonary exercise test (C-PET) and found that patients had a much lower oxygen consumption when they reached their anaerobic threshold on the maximal exercise test compared to controls, and this was much worse on the second test. Levels of oxygen phosphorylation was similar in patients and controls and creatin kinase remained low, suggesting lactate in patients was higher and mitochondrial ATP production was lower. They concluded that results suggested normal muscular mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation lactate, and that did not show defects in mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation.

Silvestre et al. (2019) found that oxidative phosphorylation was deregulated in ME/CFS patients.

Notable studies

 * 2010, Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome performed worse than controls in a controlled repeated exercise study despite a normal oxidative phosphorylation capacity (Full text)
 * 2019, Mitochondrial alterations in NK lymphocytes from ME/CFS patients (Abstract)
 * 2020, A SWATH-MS analysis of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome peripheral blood mononuclear cell proteomes reveals mitochondrial dysfunction - (Full text)

Learn more

 * Oxidative Phosphorylation - OpenStax