More evidence showing fibromyalgia is an auto-immune response and does not originate in the brain

[Badger]

At the back of my mind I do worry what might happen in the coming years as Fibro would make them harder to cope with. We have Parkinson's and cancer in the family. I just hope my older brother can avoid anything too bad at least and have more quality time with his family.

It can be tricky separating Fibro from other problems and Fibro itself seems to be very irritable. I wonder what future research may uncover

 

[SBee]

I agree @Badger. I have driven myself crazy trying to untangle health conditions to work out what symptoms come from what condition. End of the day I realised it doesn't matter so much. They all act to impact on one another.

In my own perspective I feel whilst fibromyalgia does have ' separate recognisable ' symptoms, I do feel it also aggrevates or intensifies symptoms relating to the osteo and inflammatory arthritis ( or at least fibro affects our pain perceptions to various symptoms ). So yes, if we develop other conditions will fibro worsen those too? Sadly, I feel it's likely.

Basically fibromyalgia seems to be crap in its own right and likes to act as a troublemaker and stirs everything else up.

 

[Faustina]

Thank you very much.

 

[Sharkman]

As many of us know, fibromyalgia has often been seen by others as a "brain" issue, or "all in your head". This is both frustrating and can lead to issues with diagnosis depending on your doctor or healthcare professional.

I personally do believe this is an auto-immune disorder and not simply "something in my head", or psychosomatic.

I found the following article refreshing for two reasons; (A) it was led by the institute of Psychiatry, and (B), the findings show that fibromyalgia appears to be a disease of the immune system.

Full article here: Fibromyalgia likely the result of autoimmune problems

I suspect FM is an inflammatory response to the ‘ingredients’ (Hg and Al etc) in vaccines. On the manufacturer’s vaccine inserts they often list MYALGIA as just one of many possible reactions. There are variables in the reactions as we are all different. Unfortunately people are too busy being triggered by this subject to actually investigate it. Pride.

Once we are diagnosed with the inflammatory condition we are then prescribed anti-inflammatory medications.. it’s a win win for the pharmaceutical companies. Cause the problem then provide the $olution.

“Trace Amounts” is a good documentary on the subject of vaccine reactions and Mercury (Hg) in our environment.

 

[ckahern]

Thank you for sharing that article! It feels like a prayer has been answered!

 

[johnsalmon]

On the manufacturer’s vaccine inserts they often list MYALGIA as just one of many possible reactions

they are not saying that it causes fibromyalgia but that as the injection point is into muscle there might be muscle pain ( myalgia) but this is usually short lived. I am still of the belief that fibromyalgia is a CNS condition - and that does not equate to its "all in the brain"

 

[Anabrock]

Now that's fascinating! I'm diagnosed with fibro but for years have shown signs of 'something autoimmune'. Never enough to be certain but randomly high ANA, or white cell count, or eosinophils etc. Its all over the map - the blood tests never make sense. Now my mother has an incredibly rare autoimmune condition which is fiendish to diagnose (neurosarcoidosis) so doctors have said maybe it's not fibro, maybe it's subclinical neurosarcoidosis. But as that is most commonly diagnosed post-mortem that's not very helpful for me. They've tried me on various immunosuppressants to see if it did anything, but tragically it didn't. Hence the fibro diagnosis. If fibro is autoimmune in origin, its an autoimmune condition that isn't affected by most of the immunosuppressant meds going. Which is possible if fibro is a neurological AI condition like neurosarcoidosis. Hmm, it's got me thinking

 

[Carolalap]

This is good news that they are getting to the bottom of it, but unfortunately, there are still most doctors (like the one where I recently moved that say there is no such thing and it's all in our heads. I wish there were more doctors trained to deal with this.

 

[sunkacola]

I think that it actually may originate in the brain, but that doesn't mean "it's all in our heads", meaning that we are imagining it or that it is a mental illness. It may be a misfunction of something in the pain receptors in the brain, which tell us that something is wrong when actually nothing is wrong. Except, of course, that we are feeling pain. Some researchers are convinced that this is the case. But as yet, no one can prove anything one way or the other.

 

[johnsalmon]

I suspect FM is an inflammatory response to the ‘ingredients’ (Hg and Al etc) in vaccines.

I do not have vaccines and I have FM - I still believe that FM is a central nerve condition not an auto immune condition
to quote the paper referred top "This finding strongly suggests that therapies which reduce antibody levels in patients are likely to be effective treatments."
I was on medication that reduced my antibody levels SEVERELY and It did not reduce my FM symptoms at all

 

[Anabrock]

I do not have vaccines and I have FM - I still believe that FM is a central nerve condition not an auto immune condition
to quote the paper referred top "This finding strongly suggests that therapies which reduce antibody levels in patients are likely to be effective treatments."
I was on medication that reduced my antibody levels SEVERELY and It did not reduce my FM symptoms at all

Firstly, auto immune conditions are not the same. For example my mum has neurosarcoidosis, an extremely rare AI condition. Other AI meds such as Plaquemine, azathioprine etc did nothing. Prednisalone seemed to help but the drug that's helped most is methotrexate. OTOH methotrexate did nothing for my friend with ankylosing spondylitis but immunoglobulins (aka 'disease modifiers') worked great. Different parts of the immune system are over active in different kinds of autoimmune conditions, and different people respond to different drugs.

Secondly, there are parts of the immune system which are largely closed off from the rest of the body - many drugs can't cross the blood-brain barrier, for example, so even though conditions like MS are thought to be autoimmune, they don't respond to typical immunosuppressants. My mum is lucky that they found a drug that could treat her neurological immune disorder.

I have a friend with Primary Immune Deficiently Disorder, and his immune system is missing various components including B cells. Despite this, he still has autoimmune conditions including crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis. He also gets bad allergies! He explained that due to his PIDD, other parts of his immune system have become over active to compensate.

So IMHO (non medical) if fibro is an autoimmune disorder, it's an AI disorder like MS, rather than an AI condition like RA.