@article{ref1,
title="Self-reported fatigue was associated with increased white-matter alterations in long-term traumatic brain injury and posttraumatic stress disorder patients",
journal="Neuroscience",
year="2023",
author="Mohamed, Abdalla Z. and Lagopoulos, Jim and Nasrallah, Fatima A. and Shan, Zack",
volume="ePub",
number="ePub",
pages="ePub-ePub",
abstract="Fatigue is a long-lasting problem in traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with limited research that investigated the fatigue-related white-matter changes within TBI and/or PTSD cohorts. This exploratory cross-sectional study used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and neuropsychological data collected from 153 male Vietnam War veterans, as part of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative - Department of Defense, and were divided clinically into control veterans, PTSD, TBI, and with both TBI and PTSD (TBI+PTSD). The existence of fatigue was defined by the question &quot;Do you often feel tired, fatigued, or sleepy during the daytime?&quot;. DTI data were compared between fatigue and non-fatigue subgroups in each clinical group using tract-based spatial statistics voxel-based differences. Fatigue was reported in controls (29.55%), slightly higher in TBI (52.17%, P(Benf) = 0.06), and significantly higher in both TBI+PTSD (66.67%, P(Benf) = 0.001) and PTSD groups (79.25%, P(Benf) < 0.001). Compared to non-fatigued subgroups, no white-matter differences were observed in the fatigued subgroups of control or TBI, while the fatigued PTSD subgroup only showed increased diffusivity measures (i.e., radial and axial), and the fatigued TBI+PTSD subgroup showed decreased fractional anisotropy and increased diffusivity measures (P(FWE) ≤ 0.05). The results act as preliminary findings suggesting fatigue to be significantly reported in TBI+PTSD and PTSD decades post-trauma with a possible link to white-matter microstructural differences in both PTSD and TBI+PTSD. Future studies with larger cohorts and detailed fatigue assessments would be required to identify the white-matter changes associated with fatigue in these cohorts.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0306-4522",
doi="10.1016/j.neuroscience.2023.03.029",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2023.03.029"
}