{"id":27878,"date":"2020-09-05T20:08:02","date_gmt":"2020-09-05T19:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/?p=27878"},"modified":"2021-02-19T20:23:03","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T20:23:03","slug":"using-structural-functional-mri-as-a-neuroimaging-technique-to-investigate-cfs-me-a-systematic-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/using-structural-functional-mri-as-a-neuroimaging-technique-to-investigate-cfs-me-a-systematic-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Using structural &#038; functional MRI as a neuroimaging technique to investigate CFS\/ME: a systematic review"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><a href=\"https:\/\/bmjopen.bmj.com\/content\/10\/8\/e031672\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Using structural and functional MRI as a neuroimaging technique to investigate chronic fatigue syndrome\/myalgic encephalopathy: a systematic review<\/a>, by\u00a0<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">in<\/span> <em>BMJ Open <\/em>Vol 10, #8, p e031672, August 30, 2020 [doi.org\/10.1136\/bmjopen-2019-031672]<\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Strengths and limitations of this study<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>To the best of our knowledge, this is the first systematic review of neuroimaging studies that have investigated chronic fatigue syndrome\/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS\/ME) using MRI.<\/li>\n<li>We reviewed both structural MRI and functional MRI (fMRI) studies of CFS\/ME.<\/li>\n<li>We identified common limitations across the neuroimaging studies and make recommendations for future research.<\/li>\n<li>We were unable to find conclusive evidence for neural biomarkers of CFS\/ME.<\/li>\n<li>The main limitation of the current systematic review is that a meta-analysis was not possible because of the different methodologies across the studies, such as fMRI studies using a variety of tasks to assess different cognitive functions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3><strong>Research abstract<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Objective<\/strong><br \/>\nThis systematic review aims to synthesise and evaluate structural MRI (sMRI) and functional MRI (fMRI) studies in chronic fatigue syndrome\/myalgic encephalomyelitis (CFS\/ME).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Methods<\/strong><br \/>\nWe systematically searched Medline and Ovid and included articles from 1991 (date of <strong>Oxford diagnostic criteria<\/strong> for CFS\/ME) to first April 2019. Studies were selected by predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Two reviewers independently reviewed the titles and abstracts to determine articles for inclusion, full text and quality assessment<br \/>\nfor risk of bias.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Results<\/strong><br \/>\nsMRI studies report differences in CFS\/ME brain anatomy in grey and white matter volume, ventricular enlargement and hyperintensities. Three studies report no neuroanatomical differences between CFS\/ME and healthy controls. Task-based fMRI investigated working memory, attention, reward and motivation, sensory information processing and emotional conflict. The most consistent finding was CFS\/ME exhibited increased activations and recruited additional brain regions. Tasks with increasing load or<br \/>\ncomplexity produced decreased activation in task-specific brain regions.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusions<\/strong><br \/>\nThere were insufficient data to define a unique neural profile or biomarker of CFS\/ME. This may be due to inconsistencies in finding neuroanatomical differences in CFS\/ME and the variety of different tasks employed by fMRI studies. But there are also limitations with<br \/>\nneuroimaging. All brain region specific volumetric differences in CFS\/ME were derived from voxel-based statistics that are biased towards group differences that are highly localised in space. fMRI studies demonstrated both increases and decreases in activation patterns in CFS\/ME, this may be related to task demand. However, fMRI signal cannot<br \/>\ndifferentiate between neural excitation and inhibition or function-specific neural processing.<\/p>\n<p>Many studies have small sample sizes and did not control for the heterogeneity of this clinical population. We suggest that with robust study design, subgrouping and<br \/>\nlarger sample sizes, future neuroimaging studies could potentially lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of the disease.<\/p>\n<p>[NB a broad definition of CFS was used &#8211; the patients are not homogeneous.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using structural and functional MRI as a neuroimaging technique to investigate chronic fatigue syndrome\/myalgic encephalopathy: a systematic review, by\u00a0in BMJ Open Vol 10, #8, p e031672, August 30, 2020 [doi.org\/10.1136\/bmjopen-2019-031672] &nbsp; Strengths and limitations of this study To the best &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/using-structural-functional-mri-as-a-neuroimaging-technique-to-investigate-cfs-me-a-systematic-review\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[6606,6605,416,1026,2037,6604,6603],"class_list":["post-27878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-basim-almutairi","tag-christelle-langley","tag-dr-esther-crawley","tag-fmri","tag-functional-magnetic-resonance-imaging","tag-ngoc-jade-thai","tag-oxford-criteria"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5qkYK-7fE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27878"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29860,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27878\/revisions\/29860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wames.org.uk\/cms-english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}