Created on: 07/25/08 - Email to friend - Print Page

Fibromyalgia Pain and Changes in Brain Molecule Linked

Researchers report finding a key linkage between pain and brain molecule called glutamate, a discovery that lends new insight into fibromyalgia. In patients with fibromyalgia, researchers found, pain decreased when levels of glutamate went down.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Health System gauged the link between pain and glutamate using a non-invasive brain imaging technique called proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (H-MRS). H-MRS was performed once before and once following a four-week course of acupuncture or "sham" acupuncture to reduce pain symptoms.

Following the four weeks of treatment, both clinical and experimental pain reported were reduced significantly. More importantly the reduction in both pain outcomes was linked with reductions in glutamate levels in a brain region called the insula 9: patients with greater reductions in pain showed greater reductions in glutamate. In other words, when pain decreased so did glutamate levels.

"If these findings are replicated, investigators performing clinical treatment trials in fibromyalgia could potentially use glutamate as a 'surrogate' marker of disease response," says lead author Richard E. Harris, PhD, a researcher at the University of Michigan Pain and Fatigue Research Center. The study appears in Arthritis & Rheumatism.