Hemond, Christopher CDeshpande, MugdhaBerrios Morales, IdanisZheng, ShaokuanMeyer, Jerrold SSlavich, George MCole, Steven W2024-08-022024-08-022024-06-18Hemond CC, Deshpande M, Berrios-Morales I, Zheng S, Meyer JS, Slavich GM, Cole SW. A single-arm, open-label pilot study of neuroimaging, behavioral, and peripheral inflammatory correlates of mindfulness-based stress reduction in multiple sclerosis. Sci Rep. 2024 Jun 18;14(1):14044. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-62960-w. PMID: 38890336; PMCID: PMC11189512.2045-232210.1038/s41598-024-62960-w38890336https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/53664Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neurological disease frequently associated with significant fatigue, anxiety, depression, and stress. These symptoms are difficult to treat, and prominently contribute to the decreases in quality of life observed with MS. The underlying mechanisms of these "silent" symptoms are not well understood and include not just the psychological responses to a chronic disease, but also biological contributions from bidirectional psycho-neuro-immune (dys)regulation of systemic inflammatory biology. To address these issues, we conducted a prospective, observational pilot study to investigate the psychological, biological, and neuroarchitecture changes associated with a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program in MS. The overarching hypothesis was that MBSR modulates systemic and central nervous system inflammation via top-down neurocognitive control over forebrain limbic areas responsible for the neurobiological stress response. 23 patients were enrolled in MBSR and assessed pre/post-program with structural 3 T MRI, behavioral measures, hair cortisol, and blood measures of peripheral inflammation, as indexed by the Conserved Transcriptional Response to Adversity (CTRA) profile. MBSR was associated with improvements across a variety of behavioral outcomes, as well as on-study enlargement of the head of the right hippocampus. The CTRA analyses revealed that greater inflammatory gene expression was related to worse patient-reported anxiety, depression, stress, and loneliness, in addition to lower eudaimonic well-being. Hair cortisol did not significantly change from pre- to post-MBSR. These results support the use of MBSR in MS and elucidate inflammatory mechanisms related to key patient-reported outcomes in this population.enOpen Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creativecommons. org/ licenses/ by/4. 0/. © The Author(s) 2024Attribution 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Conserved transcriptional response to adversityHair cortisolMindfulness-based stress reductionMultiple sclerosisPatient reported outcomesPerceived stressJournal ArticleScientific reports