A collaboration between three European universities: King’s College London, the University of Liverpool, and the Karolinska Institute led to a study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation demonstrating how fibromyalgia could actually stem from autoimmune problems.
The study showed how fibromyalgia could be an autoimmune disease rather than stemming from a neurologic cause, as previously suggested. Researchers conducted experimentation on rodents to establish this notion.
In the study, the rodents were injected with fibromyalgia antibodies, having recovered from it after just a few weeks upon cessation from the body.
“This finding strongly suggests that therapies which reduce antibody levels in patients are likely to be effective treatments. Such therapies are already available and are used to treat other disorders that are caused by autoantibodies,” a news release of the study reads.
“Our results demonstrate that IgG from FMS patients produces painful sensory hypersensitivities by sensitizing peripheral nociceptive afferents and suggest that therapies reducing patient IgG titers may be effective for fibromyalgia,” researchers concluded in their study.
The study was published online on July 1st, 2021.
