Dolphin
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Author
De Lellis, Marta <1999>Date
2026-03-23Data available
2026-03-26
Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS), and obesity are chronic conditions linked to dysregulation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis.
Conventional analyzes based on average hormone levels fail to capture the temporal structure of hormone secretion.
In this study, plasma ACTH and cortisol data from patients with FMS, ME/CFS, or both, healthy controls, and premenopausal women with obesity treated with bromocriptine were analyzed using a state-space framework.
First, hormone secretion was modeled as pulsatile activity, with statistical distributions fitted to interpulse intervals and amplitudes.
Results showed that interpulse intervals followed mainly lognormal-like behavior, while amplitudes were best described by lognormal or gamma distributions.
Across groups, differences were primarily in pulse timing rather than amplitude.
Bromocriptine regularized pulse timing in obesity, while significant alterations in interval statistics were observed in FMS and FMS + ME/CFS, but not in ME/CFS alone.
Second, using reconstructed secretory events and concurrent deconvolution of ACTH and cortisol, a state estimator was applied to infer a latent energy state.
This analysis revealed altered daily HPA regulation in FMS-related conditions, particularly in morning and nighttime activity, while obesity treatment was associated with reduced morning HPA activation.
Overall, the study highlights the importance of temporal hormone dynamics and latent-state modeling, providing a unified computational framework to better understand HPA axis dysregulation.
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