Unrecognized chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has nothing to do with ordinary fatigue after a hard day.

This condition, according to patients, is accompanied by constant fatigue and frustration, lack of motivation, "fog in the head", and sometimes impaired vision and gastrointestinal disorders.

The condition does not improve after a rest in bed and lasts at least 6 months.

Diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome is complicated, because there are no special analyzes or biomarkers for it, but the USA has long approved diagnostic criteria for CFS. Now, researchers have found that in the syndrome of chronic fatigue, most patients develop structural abnormalities in the brain that can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diagnosed.

The study, published in the journal Radiology, was organized by Dr. Michael Zeineh of the Stanford University School of Medicine in California.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 1 million adult Americans suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome. Since no reliable test has yet been created to diagnose this condition, physicians should rule out one after another possible diseases that can be followed by constant patient fatigue.

"This is very hard for patients, because for weeks, a person with constant fatigue and thinking disorder is driven through a variety of medical tests to determine a mysterious reason," explains Dr. Zeineh.

In addition to severe fatigue, people with CFS have muscle pains, impaired memory, thinking and concentration, insomnia and severe weakness after exercise. In some cases, this condition does not go away for years, affecting the professional achievements and personal life of the patient.

Although researchers have not yet identified the exact cause of CFS, one theory is that this syndrome is caused by a combination of several factors: infectious diseases, nutritional deficiencies, immune system dysfunction, stress and activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.

According to the Solve ME / CFS Initiative, chronic fatigue syndrome is 2-4 times more common among women, but it can affect a person of any gender, age, race, nationality and socioeconomic group.

Unfortunately, even in the USA, less than 20% of patients with this condition are correctly diagnosed. The reason for this is a lack of knowledge about the syndrome and the absence of diagnostic tests.

MRI can diagnose CFS with an accuracy of 80%. To further study the ways of diagnosing this condition, the team of Dr. Zeineh and the expert on CFS of Dr. Jose Montoya conducted an MR scan of the brain of 15 patients with chronic fatigue syndrome and 14 healthy people of the same age and sex.

A Few Facts About the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: People with CFS constantly have lower labor productivity than before illness.

Symptoms of CFS may include visual disturbances, dizziness, fog in the head, irritability, depression, gastrointestinal disorders.

The victims of CFS in the world are several million people, exact figures do not know anybody. In many countries this diagnosis is not recognized at all.

Using three different techniques of magnetic resonance imaging, scientists compared the size of different zones of the brain, assessed their integrity and the ability to transmit signals, the level of blood flow.

After analyzing the results, the researchers concluded that individuals with CFS have less average white matter in the brain compared to the control group.

In addition, in patients with CFC, the fractional anisotropy (FA) of white matter of the brain in the right arcuate fasciculus. The team states that these data suggest the development of characteristic changes in the white matter of the right hemisphere in CFS.

Dr. Zeineh commented on the results of the study: "Inside the brains of patients with CFS, the degree of change in the fractional anisotropy of white matter correlates with the severity of the disease. The higher the FA index, the heavier the syndrome ".

Moreover, the researchers found two specific anomalies in the areas of the brain that are associated with the arcuate fasciculus. These two zones in patients with CFS were thickened.

Although this study was limited - the sample was only 15 patients with CFS - Dr. Zeineh believes that the new technique is "extremely promising" and allows diagnosing chronic fatigue syndrome with 80% accuracy.

The next step of the scientists is to repeat their research on a larger group of participants and try to uncover the connection between the revealed local anomalies in the brain and the chronic fatigue syndrome.

medbe. en.

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