de Lange Floris P, Kalkman Joke S, Bleijenberg Gijs, Hagoort Peter, van der Meer Jos W M, Toni Ivan
F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL-6500 HB Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Neuroimage. 2005 Jul 1;26(3):777-81. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.02.037. Epub 2005 Apr 7.
The chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a disabling disorder of unknown etiology. The symptomatology of CFS (central fatigue, impaired concentration, attention and memory) suggests that this disorder could be related to alterations at the level of the central nervous system. In this study, we have used an automated and unbiased morphometric technique to test whether CFS patients display structural cerebral abnormalities. We mapped structural cerebral morphology and volume in two cohorts of CFS patients (in total 28 patients) and healthy controls (in total 28 controls) from high-resolution structural magnetic resonance images, using voxel-based morphometry. Additionally, we recorded physical activity levels to explore the relation between severity of CFS symptoms and cerebral abnormalities. We observed significant reductions in global gray matter volume in both cohorts of CFS patients, as compared to matched control participants. Moreover, the decline in gray matter volume was linked to the reduction in physical activity, a core aspect of CFS. These findings suggest that the central nervous system plays a key role in the pathophysiology of CFS and point to a new objective and quantitative tool for clinical diagnosis of this disabling disorder.
慢性疲劳综合征（CFS）是一种病因不明的致残性疾病。CFS的症状（中枢性疲劳、注意力不集中、注意力和记忆力受损）表明，这种疾病可能与中枢神经系统水平的改变有关。在本研究中，我们使用了一种自动化且无偏倚的形态测量技术，来测试CFS患者是否存在大脑结构异常。我们使用基于体素的形态测量法，从高分辨率结构磁共振图像中绘制了两组CFS患者（共28例）和健康对照者（共28例）的大脑结构形态和体积。此外，我们记录了身体活动水平，以探索CFS症状严重程度与大脑异常之间的关系。与匹配的对照参与者相比，我们在两组CFS患者中均观察到全脑灰质体积显著减少。此外，灰质体积的下降与身体活动的减少有关，而身体活动减少是CFS的一个核心方面。这些发现表明，中枢神经系统在CFS的病理生理学中起关键作用，并为这种致残性疾病的临床诊断指出了一种新的客观定量工具。
