Immunoglobulins from Fibromyalgia Patients Gave Mice Pain and Fatigue

fibromyalgia symptoms in mice after receiving antibodies from fibromyalgia patients
Proof that fibromyalgia is not all in your head!

This study is really important to demonstrate that there is more going on in our bodies than just sensitive nerves in our brains.

Goebel, A., Krock, E., Gentry, C., Israel, M. R., Jurczak, A., Urbina, C. M., Sandor, K., Vastani, N., Maurer, M., Cuhadar, U., Sensi, S., Nomura, Y., Menezes, J., Baharpoor, A., Brieskorn, L., Sandström, A., Tour, J., Kadetoff, D., Haglund, L., … Andersson, D. A. (2021). Passive transfer of fibromyalgia symptoms from patients to mice. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 131(13). https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI144201

The investigators extracted immunoglobulins from fibromyalgia patients and normal people and injected them into mice. The mice who received immunoglobulins from fibromyalgia patients began showing less spontaneous activity, higher pain sensitivity, and worse performance on cognitive tests. They then went looking for where those antibodies went and found them to preferentially attach to receptors within the small nerve fibers under the skin and in the big hub of nerve fibers that enters the spinal cord and sends sensory signals to the brain. Unfortunately, these were not specific antibodies, but were non-specific, indicating a non-specific autoinflammatory process. Further research is needed, but there are other papers that reference the possibility that this auto-inflammation can be induced by an energy-deficiency situation related to mitochondrial dysfunction.

Stay-tuned for more posts on this topic!

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