The association among individual gray matter volume of frontal-limbic circuitry, fatigue susceptibility, and comorbid neuropsychiatric symptoms following COVID-19.

IF 4.7 2区医学 Q1 NEUROIMAGING

NeuroImage Pub Date : 2025-01-09 DOI:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2025.121011

Xuan Niu, Wenrui Bao, Zhaoyao Luo, Pang Du, Heping Zhou, Haiyang Liu, Baoqi Wang, Huawen Zhang, Bo Wang, Baoqin Guo, Hui Ma, Tao Lu, Yuchen Zhang, Junya Mu, Shaohui Ma, Jixin Liu, Ming Zhang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Background: Fatigue is often accompanied by comorbid sleep disturbance and psychiatric distress following the COVID-19 infection. However, identifying individuals at risk for developing post-COVID fatigue remains challenging. This study aimed to identify the neurobiological markers underlying fatigue susceptibility and further investigate their effect on COVID-19-related neuropsychiatric symptoms.

Methods: Individuals following a mild SARS-CoV-2 infection (COV+) underwent neuropsychiatric measurements (n = 335) and MRI scans (n = 271) within 1 month (baseline), and 191 (70.5%) of the individuals were followed up 3 months after infection. Sixty-seven healthy controls (COV-) completed the same recruitment protocol.

Results: Whole-brain voxel-wise analysis showed that gray matter volume (GMV) during the acute phase did not differ between the COV+ and COV- groups. GMV in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and left dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) were associated with fatigue severity only in the COV+ group at baseline, which were assigned to the frontal system and limbic system, respectively. Furthermore, fatigue mediated the associations between volume differences in fatigue susceptibility and COVID-related sleep, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. Crucially, the initial GMV in the right DLPFC can predict fatigue symptoms 3 months after infection.

Conclusions: We provide novel evidence on the neuroanatomical basis of fatigue vulnerability and emphasize that acute fatigue is an important link between early GMV in the frontal-limbic regions and comorbid neuropsychiatric symptoms at baseline and 3 months after infection. Our findings highlight the role of the frontal-limbic system in predisposing individuals to develop post-COVID fatigue.

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来源期刊

NeuroImage 医学-核医学

CiteScore

11.30

自引率

10.50%

发文量

809

审稿时长

63 days

期刊介绍： NeuroImage, a Journal of Brain Function provides a vehicle for communicating important advances in acquiring, analyzing, and modelling neuroimaging data and in applying these techniques to the study of structure-function and brain-behavior relationships. Though the emphasis is on the macroscopic level of human brain organization, meso-and microscopic neuroimaging across all species will be considered if informative for understanding the aforementioned relationships.