The pain from fibromyalgia is real

Thanks to www.fibrohugs.com

Public release date: 28-Nov-2006
Contact: Katie Gazella
University of Michigan Health System


The pain from fibromyalgia is real, researchers say
University of Michigan doctors say widespread evidence verifies
validity of condition, say patients should be taken seriously

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - Many people with fibromyalgia - a debilitating
pain syndrome that affects 2 to 4 percent of the population - have
faced the question of whether the condition is real.


Fibromyalgia often has been misdiagnosed as arthritis or even a
psychological issue. Increasingly, though, the scientific knowledge
about fibromyalgia is growing, and a new paper from the University of
Michigan Health System says there are "overwhelming data" that the
condition is real, is characterized by a lower pain threshold and is
associated with genetic factors that can make some people more likely
to develop fibromyalgia.


The review paper, in the December issue of the journal Current Pain and
Headache Reports, cites recent studies involving pain, genetics, brain
activity and more. The paper's authors hope these findings will lead to
a better understanding and acceptance of fibromyalgia and related
conditions.


"It is time for us to move past the rhetoric about whether these
conditions are real, and take these patients seriously as we endeavor
to learn more about the causes and most effective treatments for these
disorders," says Richard E. Harris, Ph.D., research investigator in
the Division of Rheumatology at the U-M Medical School's Department of
Internal Medicine and a researcher at the U-M Health System's Chronic
Pain and Fatigue Research Center.


A growing amount of research related to the neurobiology of the
condition supports the notion that the pain of fibromyalgia is real.
Studies at U-M and elsewhere using two neuroimaging techniques -
functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and single photon emission
computed tomography (SPECT) - indicate there is a difference between
patients with and without fibromyalgia.


"In people without pain, these structures encode pain sensations
normally. In people with fibromyalgia, the neural activity
increased," says Daniel J. Clauw, M.D., director of the U-M Chronic
Pain and Fatigue Research Center and professor of rheumatology at the
U-M Medical School, and an author of the new paper. "These studies
indicate that fibromyalgia patients have abnormalities within their
central brain structures."


In a 2003 paper in the journal Science, a U-M team reported that a
small variation in the gene that encodes the enzyme called
catechol-O-methyl transferase, or COMT, made a significant difference
in the pain tolerance, and pain-related emotions and feelings, of
healthy volunteers. Researchers also have found that individual
mutations in the COMT gene are related to the future development of
temporomandibular joint disorder, also known as TMD or TMJ, a condition
related to fibromyalgia.


Together, these studies about COMT and numerous studies with animals
suggest that pain sensitivity is determined at least in part by a
person's genetic makeup, Clauw says.


The authors note that there are some legitimate areas of debate
regarding fibromyalgia, including disagreements about how precisely it
should be defined and whether people with the condition deserve
compensation. But none of those disagreements should detract from the
acceptance of it as a condition causing real pain, they say.


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Reference: Current Pain and Headache Reports, Dec. 2006, pp. 403-7.