Now, just a few years later, researchers in Australia think this system could be driving the symptoms of a debilitating health condition affecting millions worldwide.<\/p>\n
Their preliminary research is published in Frontiers in Neuroscience<\/a>.<\/p>\n Chronic fatigue syndrome<\/a>, sometimes known as myalgic encephalomyelitis<\/a> (ME\/CFS), has been neglected by the medical system for decades, and still has no known cause or cure.<\/p>\n Historically, health experts assumed that when patients complained of extreme fatigue, ‘brain fog’, or persistent flu-like symptoms, it was all in their minds, as no other explanation could be found.<\/p>\n In recent years, however, scientists have found ‘unambiguous<\/a>‘ biological markers of ME\/CFS in the genes<\/a>, spinal fluid, blood, and gut microbiome of patients.<\/p>\n What’s more, many of these clues are linked to the immune system or inflammation<\/a>, indicating systemic health issues.<\/p>\n Researchers at Griffith University in Australia now suspect that a broken brain sewage system may be at the very root of the problem.<\/p>\n “This study is the first to demonstrate impaired glymphatic function in ME\/CFS using MRI<\/a>, providing a mechanistic explanation for the inflammatory changes reported by other Australian and international teams,” says<\/a> neuroimmunologist Kiran Thapaliya.<\/p>\n “This suggests that dysfunction in the brain’s natural cleaning system may be a key driver of this condition.”<\/p>\n The research is small and preliminary, but the hypothesis is logically sound.<\/p>\n The glymphatic system is a new frontier in human physiology, and neuroscientists are only just beginning to sift through its muck and mire.<\/p>\n Today, most of our knowledge of this system is based on research in mice<\/a>, but it appears that the brain’s recycling efforts<\/a> are most active during sleep<\/a>. <\/p>\n This seems to be when toxic products or dead cells are flushed out of the mammalian brain<\/a>, riding on ‘waves’ of cerebrospinal fluid. These pulses of liquid appear to be pumped by some obscure plumbing network<\/a> that is still coming to light.<\/p>\n “Dysfunction in the brain’s natural cleaning system may be a key driver of this condition.” \u2013 neuroimmunologist Kiran Thapaliya<\/p>\n In humans, researchers are starting to associate issues of the glymphatic system with cognitive decline<\/a>, memory issues<\/a>, musculoskeletal problems<\/a>, and psychosis<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is the first study to investigate a link with ME\/CFS.<\/p>\n In preliminary investigations, Thapaliya and colleagues scanned the brains of 31 participants with ME\/CFS and compared them with those of 27 healthy controls. <\/p>\n Directly imaging the glymphatic system is no simple feat, which is why the waste disposal network has eluded us for so long.<\/p>\n Typically, a ‘tracer’ needs to be injected into a person’s cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) in an invasive procedure, so that it can be imaged as it flows through the system’s secret passageways<\/a>.<\/p>\n But researchers at Griffith took a different route.<\/p>\n They used a non-invasive technique that instead merely estimates glymphatic function. It does so by measuring the diffusion rate of CSF into tiny channels surrounding small blood vessels in the brain.<\/p>\n This is less direct and precise, but it can be used non-invasively to assess MRI scans. Already, this technique has hinted at changes to glymphatic flow in patients with Parkinson’s disease<\/a>, Alzheimer’s<\/a>, blood pressure issues<\/a>, and multiple sclerosis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Researchers in Australia have now found that the brain scans of CFS\/ME patients also show signs of reduced glymphatic function.<\/p>\n What’s more, this dysfunction is observed only in the brain’s right hemisphere, not the left.<\/p>\n “This kind of hemispheric asymmetry,” the study authors note<\/a>, “\u2026 has been previously reported in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, Parkinson’s<\/a> disease, and in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).”<\/p>\n Interestingly, the worse a CFS\/ME patient’s sleep issues or impaired concentration (aka ‘brain fog’), the greater the signs of glymphatic dysfunction in their right hemisphere.<\/p>\n Sonya Marshall-Gradisnik, director of the National Center for Neuroimmunology and Emerging Diseases at Griffith, explains<\/a> that these brain scans reinforce “the notion that sleep plays a critical role in maintaining brain health.”<\/p>\n “We hope the results can pave the way for better diagnosis through the use of non-invasive procedures, and importantly, future treatment for patients,” she adds.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the study’s findings cannot reveal why glymphatic dysfunction may be occurring only in the right hemisphere, or how that might be driving CFS\/ME symptoms.<\/p>\n But if the brain’s waste clearance system is not efficiently removing toxic products, it may potentially exacerbate inflammation in the central nervous system, leading to neurological symptoms.<\/p>\n This is roughly the same argument for why the glymphatic system may be disrupted in those with Alzheimer’s<\/a> or Parkinson’s<\/a> disease.<\/p>\n Far more research is needed to understand the glymphatic system in human brains, and how its disruption may lead to different diseases.<\/p>\n Related: Scientists Mapped The Human Brain’s Sewage System For The First Time<\/a><\/p>\n With its discovery, however, the field of neuroscience may never be the same. <\/p>\n The brain’s trash is turning out to be a neurological treasure.<\/p>\n The study is published in Frontiers in Neuroscience<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Michael Irving<\/a> and edited by Peter Dockrill<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our understanding of the human brain is experiencing a watershed moment. The sewerage gates are open. In 2024,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[103,61,60,2209],"class_list":["post-539933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-health","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-msft-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Human](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/nasopharngealplexus-390x415.png\")
The suspected structure of the human nasopharyngeal lymphatic plexus, based on findings in mice and monkeys. (Institute of Basic Science<\/a>)<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/PerivascularChanges-603x415.png\")
Diagram illustrating postmortem relocation of periarterial CSF tracers. (Mestre et al., Trends in Neuroscience, 2024)<\/p>\n![\"Scientists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Glymph-1200x675.png\")
Hypothesized path of CSF circulation in the human brain. (Chen et al., Front. Cell. Neurosci<\/a>., 2025)<\/p>\n![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/FOMO-1200x628-_Dont-miss-the-next-breakthrough_-cosmic-colourful-642x336.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n