Hypothalamus Connectivity in Adolescent Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

作者：Hollie Byrne, Sarah Knight, Elisha K. Josev, Adam M. Scheinberg, Richard J Beare, Joseph Yuan‐Mou Yang, Stuart Oldham, Katherine Rowe, Marc L. Seal · 发表于：Journal of Neuroscience Research · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1002/jnr.25392 · 被引用次数：6 · 研究领域：Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Research、Cerebral Palsy and Movement Disorders、Genetic Neurodegenerative Diseases

Adolescent Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) is a disabling illness of unknown etiology. Increasing evidence suggests hypothalamic involvement in ME/CFS pathophysiology, which has rarely been explored using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the condition. This work aimed to use MRI to examine hypothalamus connectivity in adolescents with ME/CFS and explore how this relates to fatigue severity and illness duration. 25 adolescents with ME/CFS and 23 healthy controls completed a neuroimaging protocol consisting of structural and multishell diffusion-weighted imaging sequences, in addition to the PedsQL Multidimensional Fatigue Scale to assess fatigue severity. Information about illness duration was acquired at diagnosis. Preprocessing and streamlines tractography was performed using QSIPrep combined with a custom parcellation scheme to create structural networks. The number (degree) and weight (strength) of connections between lateralized hypothalamus regions and cortical and subcortical nodes were extracted, and relationships between connectivity measures, fatigue severity, and illness duration were performed using Bayesian regression models. We observed weak-to-moderate evidence of increased degree, but not strength, of connections from the bilateral anterior-inferior (left: pd [%] = 99.18, median [95% CI] = -22.68[-40.96 to 4.45]; right: pd [%] = 99.86, median [95% CI] = -23.35[-38.47 to 8.20]), left anterior-superior (pd [%] = 99.33, median [95% C...