Multimodal MRI of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome: A cross-sectional neuroimaging study toward its neuropathophysiology and diagnosis.
Shan, Zack Y, Mohamed, Abdalla Z, Andersen, Thu et al.·Frontiers in neurology·2022
This study used advanced brain imaging to investigate whether ME/CFS is caused by a problem with how the brain's blood vessels respond to neural activity. Researchers scanned the brains of 288 people—including those with ME/CFS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and healthy controls—while they performed tasks and held their breath, measuring blood flow and brain chemicals. The goal was to find distinctive brain patterns that could objectively diagnose ME/CFS and understand what goes wrong in this disease.