Distinct white matter alteration patterns in post-infectious and gradual onset chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by diffusion MRI

Qiang Yu; Richard A Kwiatek; Peter Del Fante; Anya Bonner; Vince D Calhoun; Grant A Bateman; Takashi Yamamura; Zack Shan

doi:10.1038/s41598-025-09379-z

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Distinct white matter alteration patterns in post-infectious and gradual onset chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by diffusion MRI

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Distinct white matter alteration patterns in post-infectious and gradual onset chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by diffusion MRI

Qiang Yu, Richard A Kwiatek, Peter Del Fante, Anya Bonner, Vince D Calhoun, Grant A Bateman, Takashi Yamamura and Zack Shan

Scientific Reports, Vol.15(1), pp.1-13

2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-09379-z

PMCID: PMC12234658

PMID: 40624094

Appears in Thompson Institute Research Collection

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Abstract

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)

post-infectious

gradual onset

diffusion tensor imaging

axial diffusivity

white matter microstructure

Thompson Institute Special Collection

Neuroimaging

Chronic fatigue syndrome

While post-infectious (PI-ME/CFS) and gradual onset (GO-ME/CFS) myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) manifest similar symptoms, it has long been suspected that different disease processes underlie them. However, the lack of biological evidence has left this question unanswered. In this study, how white matter microstructural changes in PI-ME/CFS and GO-ME/CFS patients were investigated. PI-ME/CFS and GO-ME/CFS patients were recruited based on consensus diagnoses made by two experienced clinicians and compared their diffusion MRI features with those of rigorously matched healthy controls (HCs) with sedentary lifestyles. PI-ME/CFS participants showed significantly higher axial diffusivity (AD) in several association and projection fibres compared to HCs. Higher AD in PI-ME/CFS was significantly related to worse physical health. In contrast, GO-ME/CFS participants exhibited significantly decreased AD in the corpus callosum. Lower AD in GO-ME/CFS was significantly associated with worse mental health in commissural and projection fibres. No significant group differences were found for fractional anisotropy, mean diffusivity, or radial diffusivity. Distinct patterns of AD alterations in PI-ME/CFS and GO-ME/CFS provide neurophysiological evidence of different disease processes and highlight the heterogeneities of ME/CFS.

Details

Title: Distinct white matter alteration patterns in post-infectious and gradual onset chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by diffusion MRI
Authors: Qiang Yu (Corresponding Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Thompson Institute
Richard A Kwiatek (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Thompson Institute
Peter Del Fante (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Thompson Institute
Anya Bonner (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Thompson Institute
Vince D Calhoun (Author) - Georgia State University
Grant A Bateman (Author) - John Hunter Hospital
Takashi Yamamura (Author) - National Center of Neurology and Psychiatry
Zack Shan (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Thompson Institute
Publication details: Scientific Reports, Vol.15(1), pp.1-13
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2025
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-09379-z
ISSN: 2045-2322
PMID: 40624094; PMC12234658
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Data Availability: The demographics, symptom scores, and preprocessed DTI metrics (FA, MD, AD and RD) of each participant that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Zenodo repository at http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.12791948.
Grants: Multimodal MRI of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: Understanding its Neuropathophysiology and Developing an Objective Neuromarker, 1184219, National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia, Canberra) - NHMRC
Grant note: The Judith Jane Mason & Harold Stannett Williams Memorial Foundation (The Mason Foundation).
Organisation Unit: Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; Thompson Institute
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991144639102621
Output Type: Journal article

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