A systematic review of neurological impairments in myalgic encephalomyelitis/ cfs using neuroimaging techniques: Maksoud, Marshall-Gradisnik Apr 2020

A systematic review of neurological impairments in myalgic encephalomyelitis/ chronic fatigue syndrome using neuroimaging techniques

• Rebekah Maksoud ,
• Stanley du Preez,
• Natalie Eaton-Fitch,
• Kiran Thapaliya,
• Leighton Barnden,
• Hélène Cabanas,
• Donald Staines,
• Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik

• Published: April 30, 2020
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232475

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0232475

 

Repasting what I wrote about this paper on PR:

This is a pretty well done and thorough review paper, makes for a good reference to find papers you might've read long ago on particular neuroimaging studies of ME.

While most, if not all, the neuroimaging studies in ME had fairly small sample sizes (due to abysmal ME funding!) and most used Fukuda criteria because CCC and ICC didn't become mainstream for ME research until after many of these studies were published, seeing all the papers again in one document shows that there were indeed multiple replicated results, with some being replicated in a number of papers. Though of course there were also inconsistent results between some papers, so hopefully with CCC criteria selected patients and larger sample sizes (increased funding for ME research) that future neuroimaging studies can produce more highly statistically significant findings and possible markers of ME.

My first pleasant surprise about this review, and I didn't realize this about ME until I saw this with all the results in one place, is wow the cingulate cortex brain region appears to very implicated in ME. It was found to have abnormalities/impairments in cerebral blood flow studies, neuroinflammation and other PET studies (i.e. lower SERT transporter density, glucose hypometabolism), functional connectivity studies, EEG studies, and cognitive function fMRI and SPECT studies (and possibly a couple types I missed). And many of these cingulate cortex findings are replicated by multiple papers. Of course there are other brain regions with abnormalities discussed in the review that are important, but the cingulate cortex appeared to me to stand out as it has been implicated in almost all the different study modalities.

The cingulate cortex is a key brain region that has a lot of important and coordinating functions.

From Neuroanatomy, Cingulate Cortex:

The cingulate cortex is also involved in regulation of autonomic and neuroendocrine responses and pain perception.