Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0016053 (fibromyalgia)
 4,687 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

To study relations between neural and immune activity in patients with chronic pain, we correlated regional cerebral blood flow measured with [(15)O]butanol positron emission tomography to immune function in five patients with fibromyalgia. Partly replicating previous data in healthy volunteers, natural killer cell activity correlated negatively with right hemisphere activity in the secondary somatosensory and motor cortices as well as the thalamus. Moreover, natural killer cell activity was negatively and bilaterally related to activity in the posterior cingulate cortex. Thus, immune parameters were related to activity in brain areas involved in pain perception, emotion, and attention. Implicated from a small study population, these strong neuro-immune associations are discussed in view of recent findings concerning mechanisms and adaptive values in immuno-cortical communication and regulation.
 ...
PMID:Neuroimmune relations in patients with fibromyalgia: a positron emission tomography study. 1071 24

Moderate pressure massage has contributed to many positive effects including increased weight gain in preterm infants, reduced pain in different syndromes including fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, enhanced attentiveness, reduced depression and enhanced immune function (increased natural killer cells and natural killer cell activity).Surprisingly, these recent studies have not been reviewed, highlighting the need for the current review. When moderate and light pressure massage have been compared in laboratory studies, moderate pressure massage reduced depression, anxiety and heart rate, and it altered EEG patterns, as in a relaxation response. Moderate pressure massage has also led to increased vagal activity and decreased cortisol levels. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data have suggested that moderate pressure massage was represented in several brain regions including the amygdala, the hypothalamus and the anterior cingulate cortex, all areas involved in stress and emotion regulation. Further research is needed to identify underlying neurophysiological and biochemical mechanisms associated with moderate pressure massage.
...
PMID:Massage therapy research review. 2517 13

Chronic pain prevalence is high worldwide and increases at older ages. Signs of premature aging have been associated with chronic pain, but few studies have investigated aging biomarkers in pain-related conditions. A set of DNA methylation (DNAm)-based estimates of age, called "epigenetic clocks," has been proposed as biological measures of age-related adverse processes, morbidity, and mortality. The aim of this study is to assess if different pain-related phenotypes show alterations in DNAm age. In our analysis, we considered three cohorts for which whole-blood DNAm data were available: heat pain sensitivity (HPS), including 20 monozygotic twin pairs discordant for heat pain temperature threshold; fibromyalgia (FM), including 24 cases and 20 controls; and headache, including 22 chronic migraine and medication overuse headache patients (MOH), 18 episodic migraineurs (EM), and 13 healthy subjects. We used the Horvath's epigenetic age calculator to obtain DNAm-based estimates of epigenetic age, telomere length, levels of 7 proteins in plasma, number of smoked packs of cigarettes per year, and blood cell counts. We did not find differences in epigenetic age acceleration, calculated using five different epigenetic clocks, between subjects discordant for pain-related phenotypes. Twins with high HPS had increased CD8+ T cell counts (nominal p = 0.028). HPS thresholds were negatively associated with estimated levels of GDF15 (nominal p = 0.008). FM patients showed decreased naive CD4+ T cell counts compared with controls (nominal p = 0.015). The severity of FM manifestations expressed through various evaluation tests was associated with decreased levels of leptin, shorter length of telomeres, and reduced CD8+ T and natural killer cell counts (nominal p < 0.05), while the duration of painful symptoms was positively associated with telomere length (nominal p = 0.034). No differences in DNAm-based estimates were detected for MOH or EM compared with controls. In summary, our study suggests that HPS, FM, and MOH/EM do not show signs of epigenetic age acceleration in whole blood, while HPS and FM are associated with DNAm-based estimates of immunological parameters, plasma proteins, and telomere length. Future studies should extend these observations in larger cohorts.
 ...
PMID:Analysis of Epigenetic Age Predictors in Pain-Related Conditions. 3258 3