According to an American study, people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome have brain abnormalities. These results could help to better diagnose this pathology.
Chronic fatigue, pain in the joints or muscles, headache or throat pain or memory problems, these are some of the symptoms suffered by patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis, commonly called chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) . But, people with CFS also have brain abnormalities, according to a small study published in the American medical journal Radiology.
Spotted using MRI
To reach this conclusion, researchers at Stanford School of Medicine (California) performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) on fifteen male and female patients with this syndrome and on a control group of fourteen people from both. healthy sexes and of the same age.
In detail, they used three different MRI techniques to obtain a volumetric scan to measure the size of different brain compartments, to observe the brain’s white matter made up of nerve fibers carrying messages between neurons and another to measure cerebral blood flow.
80% of cases of chronic fatigue detected
Comparison of the different results revealed that people with chronic fatigue syndrome have a slightly lower volume of white matter. They also have an abnormal diffusion of water molecules into part of the white matter of the right cerebral hemisphere.
Finally, the researchers found in subjects suffering from this syndrome abnormalities in two parts of the brain that connect the frontal lobe and the temporal lobe.
“ The more abnormal these two parts of the brain, i.e. thicker in appearance, the more severe the symptoms. “, stressed to Agence France Presse (AFP) Dr Michael Zeineh, assistant professor of radiology at Stanford medical school.
According to him, these results allow to consider the possibility of having a biomarker of chronic fatigue syndrome which could help to diagnose it, “even if this research concerns only fifteen patients”, they admit. These scientists point out that imaging techniques hold promise as a diagnostic tool. They estimate that they have achieved an 80% detection rate.
The viral hypothesis of the disease revived
And besides the diagnostic tool, MRIs could also identify brain mechanisms where the disease affects the central nervous system, according to the authors.
They conclude that “on this subject, the hypothesis of a viral cause is increasingly accepted because an infection is often identified as a trigger factor coupled with a dysfunction of the immune system. “
As a reminder, nearly 150,000 French people suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, often indifferent. It mainly affects young adults between 20 and 40 years old and women are twice as affected as men.
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