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Volumetric differences in hippocampal subfields and associations with clinical measures in myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome
Author(s) -
Thapaliya Kiran,
Staines Donald,
MarshallGradisnik Sonya,
Su Jiasheng,
Barnden Leighton
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
journal of neuroscience research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.72
H-Index - 160
eISSN - 1097-4547
pISSN - 0360-4012
DOI - 10.1002/jnr.25048
Subject(s) - chronic fatigue syndrome , hippocampal formation , hippocampus , medicine , psychology , encephalomyelitis , cognition , neuroscience , central nervous system
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) patients suffer from a cognitive and memory dysfunction. Because the hippocampus plays a key role in both cognition and memory, we tested for volumetric differences in the subfields of the hippocampus in ME/CFS. We estimated hippocampal subfield volumes for 25 ME/CFS patients who met Fukuda criteria only (ME/CFS Fukuda ), 18 ME/CFS patients who met the stricter ICC criteria (ME/CFS ICC ), and 25 healthy controls (HC). Group comparisons with HC detected extensive differences in subfield volumes in ME/CFS ICC but not in ME/CFS Fukuda . ME/CFS ICC patients had significantly larger volume in the left subiculum head ( p < 0.001), left presubiculum head ( p = 0.0020), and left fimbria ( p = 0.004). Correlations of hippocampus subfield volumes with clinical measures were stronger in ME/CFS ICC than in ME/CFS Fukuda patients. In ME/CFS Fukuda patients, we detected positive correlations between fatigue and hippocampus subfield volumes and a negative correlation between sleep disturbance score and the right CA1 body volume. In ME/CFS ICC patients, we detected a strong negative relationship between fatigue and left hippocampus tail volume. Strong negative relationships were also detected between pain and SF36 physical scores and two hippocampal subfield volumes (left: GC‐ML‐DG head and CA4 head). Our study demonstrated that volumetric differences in hippocampal subfields have strong statistical inference for patients meeting the ME/CFS ICC case definition and confirms hippocampal involvement in the cognitive and memory problems of ME/CFS ICC patients.