Chronic Fatigue Patients Brains Messed Up Even at Rest

[Cort]

Most ME/CFS studies don't find problems at rest - the problems show up when people with ME/CFS are put under stress.....Not so with study. Even at rest brain functioning was impaired.

Roland Staud usually does fibromyalgia research but he's been drifting over into ME/CFS lately. That's goods - this guy can get grants! This study showed resting brain problems are found in both FM as in ME/CFS. ...

Brain Connect. 2015 Oct 9. [Epub ahead of print] Abnormal Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Results of Seed and Data-Driven Analyses. Gay C1, Robinson ME2, Lai S3, O'Shea A4, Craggs J5, Price DD6, Staud R7.

• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26449441

Although altered resting-state functional connectivity is a characteristic of many chronic pain conditions it has not yet been evaluated in patients with chronic fatigue. Our objective was to investigate the association between fatigue and altered resting-state functional connectivity in myalgic-encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS).

He found that

• the functional connectivity of the left anterior mid-cingulate with the SMN and the connectivity of the left posterior-cingulate cortex with the SN were significantly decreased. (The anterior cingulate is showing up big in both FM and ME/CFS.)
• Significantly reduced blood flows were found in five distinct clusters in the right parahippocampus and occipital lobes
• These areas also showed reduced connectivity with other regions
• Importantly, the degree of abnormal connectivity correlated with the level of self-reported fatigue.

His conclusion: Our results confirm altered RS functional connectivity in patients with ME/CFS which was significantly correlated with the severity of their chronic fatigue.

 

[Hello!]

Reduced blood perfusion must result in reduced activity in that area. I wonder what it would look like if he separated out those with and without POTS, and those with and without we'll controlled POTS.

Wikipedia lists 10 different diseases with rsfMRI changes, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resting_state_fMRI . It would be interesting to compare symptoms and rsfMRI changes across diseases.