Pain evoked by passive transfer of IgG from fibromyalgia patients to mice

纤维肌痛是全球慢性疼痛最常见的原因之一。目前还没有诊断测试，患者的诊断是基于他们的疼痛有多严重和广泛，以及他们是否有其他症状，如疲劳，睡眠问题和抑郁症。纤维肌痛的治疗重点是锻炼和教育，这有助于患者变得更加活跃，更好地科普疼痛。用于治疗纤维肌痛疼痛的药物对某些患者有效，但通常会导致有问题的副作用，并且随着时间的推移会变得不那么有效。纤维肌痛对生活质量有严重影响，但患者看起来健康的事实可能使他们难以获得福利并说服他人他们的感受。虽然纤维肌痛影响超过50人中的1人，但疾病的原因仍然未知。更好地了解纤维肌痛的原因，可能会大大加快改进治疗方法的发展和诊断测试的发明。我们已经发现，身体的正常防御机制，免疫系统，是纤维肌痛患者疼痛的原因。我们的免疫系统通常帮助我们消灭细菌和其他寄生虫，从而帮助我们对抗感染，并对它们产生免疫力。我们的研究结果表明，纤维肌痛患者的免疫系统除了对抗感染外，还攻击自己的身体。免疫系统的激活会刺激全身的痛觉神经，使患者对压力和温度过于敏感，从而经历持续的疼痛。在我们的试点实验中，我们使用了从纤维肌痛患者和健康志愿者中纯化的样品，并将其注射到小鼠体内。值得注意的是，给予患者样本的小鼠出现了与样本取自的患者相似的症状，而来自健康志愿者的样本则没有影响。在这个项目中，我们将研究免疫系统如何引起纤维肌痛疼痛，从而确定纤维肌痛患者可以治疗的新方法。我们的工作很可能会改善纤维肌痛的治疗。

Fibromyalgia is one of the most common causes of chronic pain worldwide. There is no diagnostic test available and patients are diagnosed based on how severe and widespread their pain is and whether they have other symptoms, such as fatigue, sleep problems and depression. Treatment of fibromyalgia is focused on exercise and education, which help patients become more active and cope better with pain. Drugs that are used to treat pain in fibromyalgia are effective in some patients, but often cause problematic side effects and regularly become less effective with time. Fibromyalgia has a severe impact on quality of life, but the fact that patients look healthy can make it difficult for them to qualify for benefits and to convince others about how they feel. Although fibromyalgia affects more than 1 in 50 people, the cause of disease remains unknown. A better understanding of the cause of fibromyalgia, is likely to dramatically accelerate development of improved treatments and invention of diagnostic tests.We have discovered that the body's normal defence machinery, the immune system, is responsible for pain in fibromyalgia patients. Our immune system normally help us destroy bacteria and other parasites, thereby helping us fight infections, and to become immune to them. Our results show that the immune system in fibromyalgia patients attack their own bodies, in addition to fighting infections. Activation of the immune system stimulates pain-sensing nerves throughout the body, making patients too sensitive to pressure and temperature, and thereby experiencing unrelenting pain. In our pilot experiments, we have used samples purified from fibromyalgia patients and healthy volunteers and injected these to mice. Remarkably, mice that were given patient samples developed similar symptoms to the patients that the samples were taken from, whereas samples from healthy volunteers were without effect. During this project, we will investigate how the immune system causes pain in fibromyalgia and thereby also identify new ways that fibromyalgia patients can be treated. It is likely that our work will lead to improved treatment of fibromyalgia.