Dr Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik, Director of Griffith’s National Centre for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases and also works at the university’s Menzies Health Institute Queensland, said the purpose of the study was to demonstrate the potential consistencies between the ME/CFS and Long COVID patients.
“We primarily used the 7T MRI to research the brainstem and its sub regions as it helps to resolve brain structures more precisely to discover abnormalities that other MRIs aren’t able to detect,” Dr Marshall-Gradisnik said.
Lead author Dr Kiran Thapaliya said the 7T MRI showed the brainstem was significantly larger in ME/CFS and Long COVID patients compared to those who did not suffer from the same ailments.