Patients with chronic fatigue syndrome have reduced absolute cortical blood 
flow.

Clin Physiol Funct Imaging. 2006 Mar;26(2):83-6.

Kazuhiro Yoshiuchi [1,2], Jeffrey Farkas [3] and Benjamin H. 
Natelson [1]

Affiliations:
[1] Department of Neurosciences, Fatigue Research Center, UMDNJ-New Jersey 
Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA,
[2] Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, The 
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, and
[3] Department of Radiology, Fatigue Research Center, UMDNJ-New Jersey 
Medical School, Newark, NJ, USA

Correspondence: Kazuhiro Yoshiuchi, Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, 
Faculty of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 
Tokyo, Japan 113-8655  E-mail: kyoshiuc-tky@umin.ac.jp
Received 22 July 2005; accepted 6 October 2005

NLM Citation: PMID: 16494597


Summary
Prior studies on brain blood flow in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) did not 
find consistent results. This may be because they used single-photon 
emission computed tomography to measure brain blood flow, which could not 
measure absolute blood flow. Therefore, the aim of this study was to test 
the hypothesis that patients with CFS have reduced absolute cerebral blood 
flow.

Xenon-computed tomography blood flow studies were done on 25 CFS patients 
and seven healthy controls. Analyses were done after stratifying the CFS 
patients based on the presence or absence of a current psychiatric 
disorder. Flow was diminished in both groups as follows: patients with no 
current psychiatric disorders had reduced cortical blood flow in the 
distribution of both right and left middle cerebral arteries (P<0.05 for 
both) while those with current psychiatric disorders had reduced blood flow 
only in the left middle cerebral artery territory (P<0.05).

These data indicate that patients with CFS have reduced absolute cortical 
blood flow in rather broad areas when compared with data from healthy 
controls and that those devoid of psychopathology had the most reductions 
in cortical flow.

These data support, in part, our earlier findings that patients devoid of 
psychopathology are the group most at risk of having some of the symptoms 
of CFS due to brain dysfunction.