For many years now, people with Fibromyalgia have been left in the dark when it comes to having a definitive test for the disease. The only reliable way to make a diagnosis currently is by listening to the patient’s description of symptoms and doing the standard 18 Trigger Point Test, in which you need to have 11 of the 18 tender points to qualify as having Fibromyalgia.
I’ve written in the past about a company that has come up with what they claim is a blood test that shows Fibromyalgia, but although it’s been approved by the FDA in the USA, it hasn’t been backed by any of the major medical foundations or research hospitals. Now there’s a new research study out and it might prove to be on the right track.
The research comes from Ohio State University and was reported in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Here is what OSU is reporting about the study*:
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For the first time, researchers have evidence that fibromyalgia can be reliably detected in blood samples – work they hope will pave the way for a simple, fast diagnosis.
In a study that appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers from The Ohio State University report success in identifying biomarkers of fibromyalgia and differentiating it from a handful of other related diseases.
The discovery could be an important turning point in the care of patients with a disease that is frequently misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, leaving them without proper care and advice on managing their chronic pain and fatigue, said lead researcher Kevin Hackshaw, an associate professor in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and a rheumatologist at the university’s Wexner Medical Center.
Identification of biomarkers of the disease – a “metabolic fingerprint” like that discovered in the new study – could also open up the possibility of targeted treatments, he said.
Dr. Kevin Hackshaw examines fibromyalgia patient Barb Hartong at
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.
To diagnose fibromyalgia, doctors now rely on patient-reported information about a multitude of symptoms and a physical evaluation of a patient’s pain, focusing on specific tender points, he said. But there’s no blood test – no clear-cut, easy-to-use tool to provide a quick answer.
“We found clear, reproducible metabolic patterns in the blood of dozens of patients with fibromyalgia. This brings us much closer to a blood test than we have ever been,” Hackshaw said.
Though fibromyalgia is currently incurable and treatment is limited to exercise, education and antidepressants, accurate diagnosis has many benefits, Hackshaw said. Those include ruling out other diseases, confirming for patients that their symptoms are real and not imagined, and guiding doctors toward disease recognition and appropriate treatment.
“Most physicians nowadays don’t question whether fibromyalgia is real, but there are still sceptics out there,” Hackshaw said.
And many undiagnosed patients are prescribed opioids – strong, addictive painkillers that have not been shown to benefit people with the disease, he said.
“When you look at chronic pain clinics, about 40 per cent of patients on opioids meet the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia often gets worse, and certainly doesn’t get better, with opioids.”
Hackshaw and co-author Luis Rodriguez-Saona, an expert in the advanced testing method used in the study, said the next step is a larger-scale clinical trial to determine if the success they saw in this research can be replicated.
The current study included 50 people with a fibromyalgia diagnosis, 29 with rheumatoid arthritis, 19 who have osteoarthritis and 23 with lupus.
We found clear, reproducible metabolic patterns in the blood of dozens of patients with fibromyalgia. This brings us much closer to a blood test than we have ever been.
Researchers examined blood samples from each participant using a technique called vibrational spectroscopy, which measures the energy level of molecules within the sample. Scientists in Rodriguez-Saona’s lab detected clear patterns that consistently set fibromyalgia patients’ blood sample results apart from those with other, similar disorders.
First, the researchers analyzed blood samples from participants whose disease status they knew so they could develop a baseline pattern for each diagnosis. Then, using two types of spectroscopy, they evaluated the rest of the samples blindly, without knowing the participants’ diagnoses, and accurately clustered every study participant into the appropriate disease category based on a molecular signature.
“These initial results are remarkable. If we can help speed diagnosis for these patients, their treatment will be better and they’ll likely have better outlooks. There’s nothing worse than being in a grey area where you don’t know what disease you have,” Rodriguez-Saona said.
Graduate student Didem Peren Aykas uses the experimental diagnostic tool, which measures metabolic activity in the blood, distinguishing fibromyalgia from other chronic pain conditions with near 100 per cent accuracy.
The chance to partner with medical experts to help solve the problem of fibromyalgia misdiagnosis was exciting, said Rodriguez-Saona, a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State. Rodriguez-Saona said for the next study he’d like to examine 150 to 200 subjects per disease group to see if the findings of this research are replicable in a larger, more diverse population. Hackshaw said his goal is to have a test ready for widespread use within five years. Fibromyalgia is the most common cause of chronic widespread pain in the United States, and disproportionately affects women. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 2 per cent of the population – around 4 million adults – has fibromyalgia. Other organizations estimate even higher numbers.
About three in four people with fibromyalgia have not received an accurate diagnosis, according to previous research, and those who do know they have the disease waited for an average of five years between symptom onset and diagnosis. Common symptoms include pain and stiffness all over the body, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches and problems with thinking, memory and concentration.
Eventually, this work could lead to the identification of a particular protein or acid – or combination of molecules – that is linked to fibromyalgia, Rodriguez-Saona said.
“We can look back into some of these fingerprints and potentially identify some of the chemicals associated with the differences we are seeing,” he said.
In addition to identifying fibromyalgia, the researchers also found evidence that the metabolic fingerprinting technique has the potential to determine the severity of fibromyalgia in an individual patient.
“This could lead to better, more directed treatment for patients,” Hackshaw said.
Other Ohio State researchers involved with the study were Didem Aykas, Gregory Sigurdson, Marcal Plans Pujolras, Francesca Madiai, Lianbo Yu and Monica Giusti. Tony Buffington, formerly of Ohio State and now at the University of California, Davis, was also a co-author.
The research was supported in part by the Columbus Medical Research Foundation.
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These are exciting times to be in research for Fibromyalgia. Remember
There is always hope!
*Journal of Biological Chemistry
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