Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2005 Aug:75:29-37.

Fibromyalgia: the nerve of that disease

Jon D Levine  1 , David B Reichling
Affiliations
  • PMID: 16078358
Review

Fibromyalgia: the nerve of that disease

Jon D Levine et al. J Rheumatol Suppl. 2005 Aug.

Abstract

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FM) is a common, often debilitating and intractable, chronic, generalized pain condition. The development of effective therapies to treat FM has been hindered by a lack of understanding of fundamental mechanisms in the etiology of FM. In view of prominent characteristics that FM shares with other generalized pain conditions, we suggest that a key mechanism in such disorders may be that of altered activity in the subdiaphragmatic vagus nerve. Specifically, we propose that activity in vagal afferents, arising from the gastrointestinal tract, and sympathoadrenal function mediate a contribution of stress to FM and its strong association with irritable bowel syndrome. An important prediction of the proposed mechanism is that interventions that selectively modulate activity in specific populations of subdiaphragmatic afferents might be used to treat the symptoms of FM and other generalized pain syndromes.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

Publication types

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources