Date sent: Fri, 8 Sep 2000 Cerebral perfusion in chronic fatigue syndrome and depression. British Journal of Psychiatry 2000 Jun;176:550-6 Machale SM, Lawrie SM, Cavanagh JT, Glabus MF, Murray CL, Goodwin GM, Ebmeier KP University Department of Psychiatry, Royal Edinburgh Hospital. PMID: 10974961, UI: 20430660 30 people with CFS (PWCs), 12 with depression, and 15 healthy volunteers were assessed for regional cerebral perfusion at rest. PWCs and depressed patients showed increased perfusion in the right thalamus, pallidum and putamen. CFS patients also had increased perfusion in the left thalamus. Depressed patients had relatively less perfusion of the left prefrontal cortex than PWCs. The authors were unable to test for reduced perfusion of the brain-stem in PWCs due to limits in the spatial resolution of SPECT. The authors state that the main limitation of their study was that their CFS subjects had high levels of depression. They also state that their method of choosing subjects may mean that the PWC and control groups were not representative of those groups in clinics and in the community. Almost all the depressed subjects and half of the PWCs were medicated for depression, and psychotropic medication may alter cerebral perfusion, although the authors state that their findings in PWCs did not appear to be explained by medication effects. Full text: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/176/6/550 [AOL users: click here]