More than 2 percent of Americans with fibromyalgia are women. The researchers used a super-fast form of MRI brain imaging called functional MRI or fMRI to correlate subjective pain sensation with objective views of brain signals. A recent study offers the first objective method for corroborating what fibromyalgia patients report they feel, and what's going on in their brains. A road map of the areas of the brain showed that patients with fibromyalgia are less active when they feel pain.

An unique opportunity to look at the neurobiology underlying tenderness was given by fMRI technology which is a hallmark of fibromyalgia. Some pathologic process is making the patients more sensitive. There's a neurobiological amplification of their pain signals. Further results were presented at the ACR annual meeting. The project will continue at UMHS, joining other fibromyalgia research.

In the ancient history fibromyalgia was diagnosed as a chronic disease, characterized by tenderness and stiffness all over the body as well as fatigue, headaches, gastrointestinal problems and depression. The disease interferes with work, family and personal life. It is well known that women are predisposed more than males to fibromyalgia, which appears in most cases during childbearing years. A classification criteria for fibromyalgia in 1990 helps doctors diagnose it and rule out other chronic pain conditions.

The existence of fibromyalgia says to be rooted more in psychological and social factors than in physical, biological causes. Neuroscientists have begun to use brain scan technology to identify the areas of the normal human brain that become most active during pain. Some studies assessed the blood flow in those areas in fibromyalgia patients during baseline brain scans. A new study use both high-speed scanning and a painful stimulus.

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. Painful and non-painful levels had been set for each patient prior to scan and the pressures were varied over time.

It only took a mild pressure to produce self-reported feelings of pain in the fibromyalgia patients while other patients tolerated the same pressure with little pain. The mild pressure produced measurable brain responses in areas that process the sensation of pain. But the same kind of brain responses weren't seen in control subjects until the pressure on their thumb was more than doubled.

In both patients and control subjects the brain activity increased in the same areas and were striking differences too. The activity in 12 areas of the brains at patients who feel pain from mild pressure had increased, while the activity in two areas had increased at the control subjects feeling the same pressure. The rating and the number of brain areas activated when the pressure on the control subjects' thumbs was increased. Only eight of the areas were the same as those in patients' brains. At some patients there are some areas that were activated but not in controls and some areas that stayed "quiet" in them.

Even fibromyalgia causes pains many improved treatments may help the patients to recover.