How the immune system can cause chronic widespread pain

What is it about?

For years, the prevailing view has been that pain in fibromyalgia is caused by dysfunctional processing of pain-related signals in the brain. Our work shows that there now is a tangible cause – in patients with fibromyalgia, immune cells called neutrophils acquire the ability to migrate towards nerve cells and activate them to produce pain sensation. This may explain why pain experienced by patients is widespread because neutrophils circulate in our blood. Physicians now have a better understanding of why their patients with fibromyalgia are susceptible to infections due to aberrant activity of neutrophils, as well as why patients have a widespread manifestation of pain without obvious signs of tissue injury. Patients are routinely prescribed analgesic drugs that act on central nervous system processing of pain, but these do not specifically target the mechanisms driving pain in fibromyalgia. Our findings provide the groundwork of developing a precision medicine approach to treating chronic widespread pain in fibromyalgia.

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