Patients with chronic fatigue have decreased signaling and communication between specific brain regions when the brain is at rest, and less effective connectivity between these regions strongly correlates with greater fatigue, according to the results of a new study published in Brain Connectivity, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Brain Connectivity website until November 28, 2015.
Charles Gay, Roland Staud, and colleagues, University of Florida college of Medicine, Gainesville, studied the association between fatigue and altered resting-state connectivity in patients with myalgicencephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The researchers used two methods: comparing data on resting-state brain networks; and analyzing cerebral blood flow in selected brain regions.
This research was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant R01 NR014049-01, NIH/NCATS Clinical and Translational Science grant UL1 TR000064, and NIH training grant F32A T007729.
Article: Abnormal Resting-State Functional Connectivity in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Results of Seed and Data-Driven Analyses, Mr. Charles Gay, Prof. Michael E Robinson, Prof. Song Lai, Mr. Andrew O'Shea, Dr. Jason Craggs, Prof. Donald D Price, and Prof. Roland Staud, Brain Connectivity, doi:10.1089/brain.2015.0366, published online 9 October 2015.