Brain Scans Document Fibromyalgia Pain

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Brain Scans Document Fibromyalgia Pain

Mon Jun 17, 5:29 PM ET

By Stenson

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Brain scans of people with fibromyalgia offer the

first hard evidence of what patients already know: Their pain is real and their

threshold for tolerating it is substantially lower than that of most

individuals.

" When patients with fibromyalgia tell us that they're tender, that they're

experiencing pain at a much lower level than people without the condition, they

are in fact experiencing that pain, " said Dr. Clauw, a professor of

medicine at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor.

" This is the first neurobiological evidence of the veracity of their pain, " he

told Reuters Health.

Fibromyalgia affects an estimated 2% to 4% of the population, mostly women.

Patients commonly report feeling tenderness, stiffness and sometimes unbearable

pain in various areas of the body. They also may suffer from fatigue, depression

and gastrointestinal problems. Some doctors without expertise in fibromyalgia

have dismissed patients' complaints because there have been no documented

physical signs of the disorder.

" I hope this study helps convince physicians that this is a real condition, "

Clauw said.

In the new report, published in a recent issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism, Clauw

and colleagues studied 16 people who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and 16

healthy people who had not (the " control " group). All underwent a type of

detailed brain scan known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while

an instrument intermittently applied different levels of pressure to their left

thumbnail.

When all study participants received the same level of mild pressure, blood flow

increased much more in the brains of patients with fibromyalgia than among those

in the control group. The increased blood flow--which is a " surrogate measure "

for nerve activity--occurred in areas of the brain known to be associated with

pain, Clauw noted.

In addition, when study participants were subjected to different levels of

pressure, fibromyalgia patients reported pain at half the level of pressure that

caused the same feelings of pain among the healthy controls, results showed.

Clauw said the findings suggest that something is awry with the way the central

nervous system processes painful stimuli in fibromyalgia patients. Future

research should be aimed at identifying the problem and working to develop

better treatments, he added.

SOURCE: Arthritis & Rheumatism 2002;46:1333-1343.

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