A study conducted at the McGill University Centre for Research on pain has proven the first direct evidence that Fibromyalgia patients have an abnormal dopamine response to pain.
“While brain dopamine is best known for its role in pleasure, motivation and motor control, recent evidence suggests that it is also involved in pain modulation,” write the researchers. “Because dopamine is implicated in both pain modulation and affective processing, we hypothesized that fibromyalgia may involve a disturbance of dopaminergic neurotransmission.”
Study participants included FM patients and a healthy control group. Members of both groups were subjected to deep muscle pain produced by an injection of hypertonic saline into a leg muscle. Positron emission tomography was used to determine the endogenous release of dopamine in response to the painful stimulus. Fibromyalgia patients experienced the hypertonic saline as more painful than the healthy control subjects did.
Kind of proves the obvious. FM is genetic and acts on the CNS through the neurotransmitters.
Our extended family is a classic case – to the third cousin and down to my niece….that’s six generations of slow onset FM.
We have high and low pain threshold members male and female. Controls are those who think we are neurotic. But even though I tested against a third cousin and found major mutations in the y DNA and we know where to look in the other 22 autosomal chromosomes. no research lab will even loom at his and mine and/or a high-low female-female DNA sample (we have an idea of the proteins bringing the scrambled messages to the cells in the CNS, and we know the neurotransmitters are all out oh whack – we can do brain scans (fMRIs) that show problems at the pain centres there (plus the recent aging phenomonena), spinal taps show substance P to be elevated), blood tests show red cells like hockey pucks meaning they can’t get to small capillaries (poor oxygenation), muscle biopsies that show ragged fibres instead of smooth ones, and the list goes on.
Yet go to source and look for FM markers in a targeted sample of high-low pain threshold relations with unexpected mutations, rather than a large cohort where accurate Dx is always uncertain or to families who lived together being tainted by proximity, no problem.
Here we are all over North America, living proof, it is not transferred through the mother – against common scientific opinion – and nobody with a research lab will do four tests to look for under or over active genes to seer if they might be FM genetic markers – they would rather chase symptoms or intermediate symptom-related “scientific” evidence than deviate from the scientific model and determine if simple observation would solve the marker mystery. It would cost peanuts and could be potentially worth millions – because Big Pharm’s push to dump neuropatheyic medication onto us is an utter waste of time.
Makes me crazy!
Jim Roache,
Ottawa, ON