Ventricular cerebrospinal fluid lactate is increased in chronic fatigue syndrome compared with generalized anxiety disorder: an in vivo 3.0 T (1)H MRS imaging study.

Publication Type	Academic Article
Authors	Mathew S, Mao X, Keegan K, Levine S, Smith E, Heier L, Otcheretko V, Coplan J, Shungu D
Journal	NMR Biomed
Volume	22
Issue	3
Pagination	251-8
Date Published	04/01/2009
ISSN	0952-3480
Keywords	Anxiety Disorders, Cerebral Ventricles, Fatigue Syndrome, Chronic, Lactic Acid, Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Abstract	Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a controversial diagnosis because of the lack of biomarkers for the illness and its symptom overlap with neuropsychiatric, infectious, and rheumatological disorders. We compared lateral ventricular volumes derived from tissue-segmented T(1)-weighted volumetric MRI data and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) lactate concentrations measured by proton MRS imaging ((1)H MRSI) in 16 subjects with CFS (modified US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria) with those in 14 patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and in 15 healthy volunteers, matched group-wise for age, sex, body mass index, handedness, and IQ. Mean lateral ventricular lactate concentrations measured by (1)H MRSI in CFS were increased by 297% compared with those in GAD (P < 0.001) and by 348% compared with those in healthy volunteers (P < 0.001), even after controlling for ventricular volume, which did not differ significantly between the groups. Regression analysis revealed that diagnosis accounted for 43% of the variance in ventricular lactate. CFS is associated with significantly raised concentrations of ventricular lactate, potentially consistent with recent evidence of decreased cortical blood flow, secondary mitochondrial dysfunction, and/or oxidative stress abnormalities in the disorder.
DOI	10.1002/nbm.1315
PubMed ID	18942064