Anesthesia Management: Hypersensitivity to Non-Painful Events May Be Part of Pathology in Fibromyalgia

New research shows that patients with fibromyalgia have hypersensitivity to non-painful events based on images of the patients’ brains, which show reduced activation in primary sensory regions and increased activation in sensory integration areas.
The findings, published in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatology, suggest that brain abnormalities in response to non-painful sensory stimulation may cause the increased unpleasantness that patients experience in response to daily visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation.
For the study, researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess brain response to sensory stimulation in 35 women with fibromyalgia and 25 healthy, age-matched controls. Patients had an average disease duration of 7 years and a mean age of 47.
Patients reported increased unpleasantness in response to multisensory stimulation in daily life activities. Furthermore, fMRI displayed reduced activation of both the primary and secondary visual and auditory areas of the brain, and increased activation in sensory integration regions. These brain abnormalities mediated the increased unpleasantness to visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation that patients reported to experience in daily life.
“Our study provides new evidence that patients with fibromyalgia display altered central processing in response to multisensory stimulation, which are linked to core fibromyalgia symptoms and may be part of the disease pathology,” said lead author Marina López-Solà, MD, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado.
“The finding of reduced cortical activation in the visual and auditory brain areas that were associated with patient pain complaints may offer novel targets for neurostimulation treatments in fibromyalgia patients,” she added.

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