Opposite white matter abnormalities in post-infectious vs. gradual onset chronic fatigue syndrome revealed by diffusion MRI, 2024, Yu et al

[forestglip]

Some posts have been moved to: Evidence that M.E. isn’t contagious?

 

[lelelemonade]

While I am very aware of my limited ability to evaluate a study such as this, and that matching up one's own subjective symptoms with an imperfect study and extrapolating from minimal information is obviously quite foolish... I must say that, as a person with gradual onset ME and a lot of cognitive issues (indeed, I would characterize my symptoms as primarily cognitive), this is pretty damn discouraging, especially as reading about the sort of damage associated with low axial diffusivity seems to match up pretty damn well for me.
Not that it matters.

Just to add to your n=1 I’ve had a very gradual onset with fatigue starting in my teenage years (I was a sickly child so the gradual onset doesn’t exclude post infectious) and progressing into ME in my 20s. My difficulties however are primarily related to muscle fatiguability and for someone who’s totally bedridden I’m not as cognitively impaired as you’d expect. (I’m a LDA responder though, been on it since 2023.) I’m also pretty sure immune issues play a big role for me because I get markedly better for a few weeks every time I get flu/covid

 

[NelliePledge]

Also gradual onset and I’ve had/currently have a combination of physical and cognitive symptoms throughout even when I didn’t know I had ME. So from the three experiences of gradual onset I’d say we can’t draw any conclusions about gradual onset tending towards cognitive or physical symptoms.

 

[ScoutB]

Thanks for the examples @lelelemonade and @NelliePledge. That's kind of what I was expecting, if there had been such a trend patients would probably already have noticed it.