Fibromyalgia notable studies

Fibromyalgia notable studies houses the research for the Fibromyalgia (FM/FMS) page.

2000-2004

 * 2002, Fibromyalgia Pain Isn't All In Patient's Heads, New Brain Study Finds (Article about study)


 * 2004, A link between irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia may be related to findings on lactulose breath testing

2005-2009

 * 2006, Prevalence of fibromyalgia syndrome in migraine patients.

"Chronic pain is a multidimensional process that now must be considered as a chronic degenerative disease not only affecting sensory and emotional processing, but also producing an altered brain state. Therapeutic interventions should be reconsidered in this context."
 * 2007, Neuroimaging revolutionizes therapeutic approaches to chronic pain
 * 2009, Fibromyalgia comorbidity in primary headaches.

2010-2014

 * 2010, Interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome and associated medical conditions with an emphasis on irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

"Pathophysiology: Although the etiology remains unclear, characteristic alterations in the pattern of sleep and changes in neuroendocrine transmitters such as serotonin, substance P, growth hormone and cortisol suggest that regulation of the autonomic and neuro-endocrine system appears to be the basis of the syndrome. Fibromyalgia is not a life-threatening, deforming, or progressive disease. Anxiety and depression are the most common association. Aberrant pain processing, which can result in chronic pain, may be the result of several interplaying mechanisms. Central sensitization, blunting of inhibitory pain pathways and alterations in neurotransmitters lead to aberrant neuro-chemical processing of sensory signals in the CNS, thus lowering the threshold of pain and amplification of normal sensory signals causing constant pain.""The frequent co-morbidity of fibromyalgia with mood disorders suggests a major role for the stress response and for neuroendocrine abnormalities. The hypothalamic pituitary axis (HPA) is a critical component of the stress-adaptation response. In FMS, stress adaptation response is disturbed leading to stress induce symptoms. Psychiatric co-morbidity has been associated with FMS and needs to be identified during the consultation process, as this requires special consideration during treatment."
 * 2012, Fibromyalgia Syndrome: An Overview of Pathophysiology, Diagnosis and Management




 * 2012, Dysfunctional endogenous analgesia during exercise in patients with chronic pain: To exercise or not to exercise?
 * 2014, Aquatic exercise training for fibromyalgia.

2015-2019

 * 2015, Evidence for brain glial activation in chronic pain patients

"Whole-brain voxel-wise analyses. (A) Median SUVR map from healthy controls (n = 9) and patients with chronic LBP (n = 10) are presented. Matched-pairs tests (nine versus nine) revealed significantly higher TSPO levels in patients, in thalamus, pre- and postcentral gyri, and paracentral lobule (P < 0.05 corrected for multiple comparisons; permutation testing, 10 000 permutations). As two patients were matching the same controls, the analyses were performed first using the patient best matching the control. A second analysis was performed using the other patient, limiting our search to significant clusters from the first analysis, with identical results. (B) Boxplots for each of the four regions demonstrating statistically higher SUVRs in patients are shown for illustrative purposes. postc. = postcentral; g. = gyrus; parac. lob. = postcentral lobule; prec. = precentral."


 * 2015, Some oxidative and antioxidative parameters and their relationship with clinical symptoms in women with fibromyalgia syndrome


 * 2015, Understanding the Association of Fatigue With Other Symptoms of Fibromyalgia: Development of a Cluster Model


 * 2015, Evaluation of Antiviral Antibodies against Epstein-Barr Virus and Neurotransmitters in Patients with Fibromyalgia


 * 2015, Sleep is associated with task-negative brain activity in fibromyalgia participants with comorbid chronic insomnia


 * 2015, Understanding the Association of Fatigue With Other Symptoms of Fibromyalgia: Development of a Cluster Model


 * 2015, Cognitive performance is related to central sensitization in patients with chronic whiplash-associated disorders and fibromyalgia: a case-control study


 * 2015, Fibromyalgia: A search for markers and their evaluation throughout a treatment


 * 2015, Normalization of aberrant resting state functional connectivity in fibromyalgia patients following a three-month physical exercise therapy


 * 2015, Researchers identify potential sleep-related treatment targets for fibromyalgia


 * 2015, Fibromyalgia has central nervous system origins


 * 2015, The Iceberg Nature of Fibromyalgia Burden: The Clinical and Economic Aspects


 * 2015, The effects of aquatic, isometric strength-stretching and aerobic exercise on physical and psychological parameters of female patients with fibromyalgia syndrome




 * 2015, Cytokine and chemokine profiles in fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus: a potentially useful tool in differential diagnosis.

"Nearly 500 FM, autoimmune and healthy control patients underwent testing for cytokine/chemokine activity after mitogenic stimulation. Using a numerical score, all three groups had unique patterns with FM patients demonstrating less response to stimulation. This cytokine profile test had a 93 % sensitivity and an 89.4 % specificity for the diagnosis of FM. We also found that these profiles are relatively sensitive and specific for FM compared to SLE and RA. It remains unclear if these differences are directly related to the pathogenesis of FM."


 * 2015, The Somatosensory Link in Fibromyalgia: Functional Connectivity of the Primary Somatosensory Cortex Is Altered by Sustained Pain and Is Associated With Clinical/Autonomic Dysfunction
 * 2015, Identification of a MicroRNA Signature for the Diagnosis of Fibromyalgia


 * 2016, Fibromyalgia syndrome: metabolic and autophagic processes in intermittent cold stress mice.


 * 2016, The association between borderline personality disorder, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome: systematic review

"There does not appear to be firm and consistent evidence to support the hypothesis that the prevalence of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) would be higher in individuals with fibromyalgia compared with the general population."

Fibromyalgia causes subclinical axonal damage in the RNFL that can be detected using innocuous and non-invasive OCT, even in the early disease stages. The impact on the RNFL in the temporal sectors is greater in patients with biologic fibromyalgia, suggesting the presence of neurodegenerative processes in this subgroup of patients with fibromyalgia.
 * 2016, Fibromyalgia Is Correlated with Retinal Nerve Fiber Layer Thinning




 * 2016, The prevalence of severe fatigue in rheumatic diseases: an international study.


 * 2016, Characteristics of Disturbed Sleep in Patients With Fibromyalgia Compared With Insomnia or With Pain-Free Volunteers


 * 2016, Is Efficacy of Milnacipran in Fibromyalgia Predictable? A Data Mining Analysis of Baseline and Outcome Variables.


 * 2017, The degree of cardiac baroreflex involvement during active standing is associated with the quality of life in fibromyalgia patients. (Orthostatic intollerance.)


 * 2017, Evidence of both systemic inflammation and neuroinflammation in fibromyalgia patients, as assessed by a multiplex protein panel applied to the cerebrospinal fluid and to plasma




 * 2017, Towards a neurophysiological signature for fibromyalgia.

"Here, we identify a set of three brain patterns based on fMRI responses to pressure pain and non-painful multisensory stimulation. These patterns, taken together, discriminate FM from matched healthy controls with 92% sensitivity and 94% specificity."

"Figure 2. Multivariate brain pattern that predicts fibromyalgia status on the basis of brain activation during painful (pressure) stimulation. Positive weight values reflect higher pain-evoked activation in FM patients relative to healthy participants, whereas negative weight values reflect reduced pain-evoked activation in FM patients. A. SVM pattern of whole-brain voxel weights that optimizes classification of FM patients and healthy participants. We provide the voxel-by-voxel weights for three representative regions (anterior SII, right dorsolateral and dorsomedial PFC) to illustrate the concept of weighted pattern. B. Regions whose voxel weights contributed most reliably to the prediction of FM status (q<0.05 FDR-corrected for the first two rows; p-uncorrected<0.001 to further illustrate the findings)."


 * 2018, A Blinded, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study to Investigate the Efficacy and Safety of Ferric Carboxymaltose in Iron-Deficient Patients with Fibromyalgia.


 * 2018, Primary and Secondary Fibromyalgia Are The Same: The Universality of Polysymptomatic Distress "PFM and SFM are equivalent regarding symptom burden."


 * 2018, SNPs in inflammatory genes CCL11, CCL4 and MEFV in a fibromyalgia family study

"SNPs with significant TDTs were found in 36% of the cohort for CCL11 and 12% for MEFV, along with a protein variant in CCL4 (41%) that affects CCR5 down-regulation, supporting an immune involvement for FM."

"What we did not find in our unbiased CritFM samples was 9:1 female to male fibromyalgia ratios that are widely described by expert sources [11–13]. We believe that such findings only occur in the presence of selection bias or biased ascertainment.""As unbiased epidemiological studies show only a small increase in the female to male sex ratio (~1.5:1) as opposed to the observed ratio in clinical studies of 9:1, we believe that the over-identification of fibromyalgia in women and the consequent under-identification of men is the result of bias." "FM is a disease continuum characterized by progressive and identifiable classifications. Four classes of FM can be differentiated by pain and symptom severity, specific comorbidities, and use of clinical procedures." "This commentary presents a simplified way of making the diagnosis of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) using the 1994 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention case definition. The format used can easily be modified for other case definitions. The commentary then discusses whether ME/CFS is the same or a different illness from fibromyalgia. Because overlap exists between the 2 syndromes, some investigators have posited that they are variants of the same illness. I have viewed this as an empirically testable hypothesis and have summoned considerable amounts of data that suggest that the 2 illnesses differ. Were differences to exist, that would suggest different pathophysiologic processes for each, leading to different treatments."
 * 2018, Altered Cervical Spinal Cord Resting State Activity in Fibromyalgia (See: "Supporting Information" for images.)
 * 2018, Fibromyalgia diagnosis and biased assessment: Sex, prevalence and bias
 * 2018, Characterizing classes of fibromyalgia within the continuum of central sensitization syndrome
 * 2018, Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia: Definitions, Similarities, and Differences


 * 2019, Metabolic fingerprinting for diagnosis of fibromyalgia and other rheumatologic disorders
 * A fibromyalgia blood test was the aim of the study by Hacksaw et al (2018), which looked for a fibromyalgia biomarker and found a unique metabolic fingerprint which distinguished all patients with fibromyalgia from those with systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. The study only analysed blood samples from rheumatic diseases, so it did not include patients with ME/CFS or other illnesses which can chronic pain.


 * 2019, Is insulin resistance the cause of fibromyalgia? A preliminary report (Full text)
 * Fibromyalgia (FM) is one of the most frequent generalized pain disorders with poorly understood neurobiological mechanisms. This condition accounts for an enormous proportion of healthcare costs. Despite extensive research, the etiology of FM is unknown and thus, there is no disease modifying therapy available for this condition. We show that most (if not all) patients with FM belong to a distinct population that can be segregated from a control group by their glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels, a surrogate marker of insulin resistance (IR). This was demonstrated by analyzing the data after introducing an age stratification correction into a linear regression model. This strategy showed highly significant differences between FM patients and control subjects (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.0002, for two separate control populations, respectively). A subgroup of patients meeting criteria for pre-diabetes or diabetes (patients with HbA1c values of 5.7% or greater) who had undergone treatment with metformin showed dramatic improvements of their widespread myofascial pain, as shown by their scores using a pre and post-treatment numerical pain rating scale (NPRS) for evaluation. Although preliminary, these findings suggest a pathogenetic relationship between FM and IR, which may lead to a radical paradigm shift in the management of this disorder.

Psychological paradigm

 * 2012, Personality and Fibromyalgia Syndrome

"Conclusion: No specific fibromyalgia personality is defined but it is proposed that personality is an important filter that modulates a person’s response to psychological stressors. Certain personalities may facilitate translation of these stressors to physiological responses driving the fibromyalgia mechanism."


 * 2015, Brain "fog," inflammation and obesity: key aspects of neuropsychiatric disorders improved by luteolin.


 * 2016, Explaining unexplained pain to fibromyalgia patients: finding a narrative that is acceptable to patients and provides a rationale for evidence-based interventions


 * 2016, Fibromyalgia: A Short Commentary iMedPub Journals - Journal of Headache & Pain Management - Frederick Wolfe and Brian Walitt

Hyperbaric oxygen therapy

 * 2015, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Can Diminish Fibromyalgia Syndrome


 * Noted in this News Medical article about the research all the women had concussions.

Blog on personal experience

 * 2016, Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy for treating Fibromyalgia: An update

Grant awards and current research

 * Oct 2016, Chronic pain researchers to expand work with $7.5M award from NIH
 * Jun 2018, The Bateman Horne Center will be an All of Us recruitment center for people living with ME/CFS and fibromyalgia. All of Us is a ten year Precision Medicine Initiative project that has been funded $1.5 Billion to recruit one million patients for its bio-bank. The idea is to research all diseases, from the most common to the most rare while taking into account lifestyle, environment, and biology.
 * Sep 2018, EpicGenetics has announced that Massachusetts General Hospital received approval from the FDA to test the Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine (an old Tuberculosis vaccine) on patients that tested positive with its FM/a® test.