Fig. 2

Significantly in- and decreased circulating metabolites when comparing QFS to HC, CFS to HC, and QFS to CFS. Volcanoplots showing in- and decreased circulating metabolites when comparing, a QFS (n = 31) to HC (n = 22), b CFS (n = 50) to HC (n = 22) and c QFS (n = 31) tot CFS (n = 50). A total of 1607 metabolic features were assessed with a high-throughput non-targeted metabolomics approach. Significantly in- and decreased metabolites are shown in red and statistical significance was attained if FDR adjusted P ≤ 0.05. Coefficients of in- and decreased circulating inflammatory proteins are shown in Additional file 4: Table S1. QFS Q fever fatigue syndrome, HC healthy controls, CFS chronic fatigue syndrome