Fibromyalgia: A Growth-Hormone Defect?

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Drug That Unblocks Growth Hormone May Help

May 3, 2002 -- A new study points to a possible growth-hormone defect in

women with fibromyalgia. Researchers are suggesting that a drug

currently used to treat a nerve and muscle disorder might be helpful for

fibromyalgia.

The finding comes from a report by M. , MD, and colleagues

at the Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, in the May issue of

the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

FM appears to be a complex illness in which the body's normal means of

regulating stress and pain gets out of whack. One of the hormones

involved is called growth hormone.

's team put 20 women with fibromyalgia and 10 normal women

through physical stress by having them run on a treadmill until they

were exhausted. They found that growth-hormone levels went up in the

healthy women, but not in the women with fibromyalgia.

What caused this growth-hormone defect? The researchers guessed that it

might be too much of another hormone -- somatostatin -- which blocks

growth hormone. They did the test again, only this time the women with

fibromyalgia exercised after taking a drug that blocks somatostatin.

This time, their growth hormone levels went up just like those of the

healthy women.

The drug, Mestinon, currently is used to treat myasthenia gravis, an

autoimmune disease in which people suffer attacks of muscle weakness.

and co-workers suggest that it should be studied as a possible

treatment for fibromyalgia.

Other researchers have tested fibromyalgia patients for growth hormone

defects. But a common test for growth-hormone defect -- measurement of

blood levels of a substance called IGF-1 -- seems not to work for many

fibromyalgia patients. Indeed, many of the fibromyalgia patients with

growth-hormone defects in the study had normal IGF-1 levels. The

researchers therefore recommend different tests should be used in

fibromyalgia patients.

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