Guest guest Posted June 14, 2002 Report Share Posted June 14, 2002 Dear Friends, Although this group is for arthritis, I think there are members here, who, like me, also suffer from FM. This is a wonderfully validating article. ~~~~ Fibromyalgia pain isn't all in patients' heads, new brain study finds (Posted June 7, 2002) A new brain-scan study confirms scientifically what fibromyalgia patients have been telling a skeptical medical community for years: They're really in pain. In fact, the study finds, people with fibromyalgia say they feel severe pain, and have measurable pain signals in their brains, from a gentle finger squeeze that barely feels unpleasant to people without the disease. The squeeze's force must be doubled to cause healthy people to feel the same level of pain - and their pain signals show up in different brain areas. Lead authors Gracely, Ph.D., and Dr. Clauw did the study at town University Medical Center and the National Institutes of Health, but are now continuing the work at the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS). The results, published in the current issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, the journal of the American College of Rheumatology, may offer the proof of fibromyalgia's physical roots that many doubtful physicians have sought. It may also open doors for further research on the still-unknown causes of the disease, which affects more than 2 percent of Americans, mainly women. To correlate subjective pain sensation with objective views of brain signals, the researchers used a super-fast form of MRI brain imaging, called functional MRI or fMRI, on 16 fibromyalgia patients and 16 people without the disease. As a result, they say, the study offers the first objective method for corroborating what fibromyalgia patients report they feel, and what's going on in their brains at the precise moment they feel it. And, it gives researchers a road map of the areas of the brain that are most - and least - active when patients feel pain. " The fMRI technology gave us a unique opportunity to look at the neurobiology underlying tenderness, which is a hallmark of fibromyalgia, " says Clauw. " These results, combined with other work done by our group and others, have convinced us that some pathologic process is making these patients more sensitive. For some reason, still unknown, there's a neurobiological amplification of their pain signals. " In the study, fibromyalgia patients and healthy control subjects had their brains scanned for more than 10 minutes while a small, piston-controlled device applied precisely calibrated, rapidly pulsing pressure to the base of their left thumbnail. The pressures were varied over time, using painful and non-painful levels that had been set for each patient prior to the scan. The study's design gave two opportunities to compare patients and controls: the pressure levels at which the pain rating given by patients and control subjects was the same, and the rating that the two different types of participants gave when the same level of pressure was applied. The researchers found that it only took a mild pressure to produce self-reported feelings of pain in the fibromyalgia patients, while the control subjects tolerated the same pressure with little pain. " In the patients, that same mild pressure also produced measurable brain responses in areas that process the sensation of pain, " says Clauw. " But the same kind of brain responses weren't seen in control subjects until the pressure on their thumb was more than doubled. " In all, the fibromyalgia patients' brains had both some areas that were activated in them but not in controls, and some areas that stayed " quiet " in them but became active in the brains of controls feeling the same level of pain. This response suggests that patients have enhanced response to pain in some brain regions, and a diminished response in others, Clauw says. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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