Nerve damage and fibromyalgia
About half of a small group of patients with fibromyalgia — a common syndrome that causes chronic pain and other symptoms — were found to have damage to nerve fibers in their skin and other evidence of a disease called small-fiber polyneuropathy (SFPN). Unlike fibromyalgia, which has had no known causes and few effective treatments, SFPN has a clear pathology and is known to be caused by specific medical conditions, some of which can be treated and sometimes cured. The study, by researchers at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), will appear in the journal Pain and has been released online. “This provides some of the first objective evidence of a mechanism behind some cases of fibromyalgia, and identifying an underlying cause is the first step towards finding better treatments,” says Anne Louise Oaklander, an associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the Nerve Injury Unit in the MGH...