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We don’t generally connect fibromyalgia with skin problems. The skin, though,  may present an important window into what’s going on in fibromyalgia.

skin - fibromyalgia

The skin is turning out to be a most interesting place in fibromyalgia

We use the blood vessels and sweat glands in our skin to warm or cool us. Both blood flows and sweat glands are largely controlled by the autonomic nervous system (ANS) – a system of concern in FM. The skin also tells the brain via its sensory nerves what are bodies local environment is like. Aberrant nerve transmission along these nerves could cause pain, numbness for other symptoms. The skin contains unmyelinated nerves that appear to be under attack in some people with FM.

From the autonomic nervous system to blood flows to sensory issues the skin is packed full of possibilities for understanding FM.

Nobody has yet attempted to use skin findings to solve a big problem in FM – how to diagnose it. FM, like ME/CFS, is diagnosed using symptoms.

The Study

This group measured different indices of the sympathetic skin response (SSR). SSR activity reflects “the electrical potential of the skin.” In simpler terms it measures the activity of the sweat glands located in your skin. An electric pulse is applied to the hand or foot and the response – a reflection of how the sympathetic nervous system is doing – is measured.

This test is often used to determine how well the peripheral nervous system is doing in diseases like peripheral neuropathy that knock out the nerves in the skin. If the neuropathy gets really bad as in diabetes no SSR at all will show up; the nerves are apparently dead. Since we have evidence of small fiber neuropathy in fibromyalgia, we would expect some changes to be found.

In total, the Turkish researchers measured a wide range of mostly commonly found lab tests. Then they attempted to determine which combination of tests diagnosed the FM patients and the healthy controls accurately.

  • physiological tests -skin temperature, heart and breathing rate
  • laboratory tests – rheumatoid factor (RF), c-reactive protein (CRP), white blood cell count (WBC), hemoglobin count, (HB), platelet count (PLT) and sedimentation (sedim)
  • skin sympathetic nervous system parameters (latency response time, total time and maximum amplitude values)

If they could pull this off – and if the medical world validates their findings – we could have the first biological test for fibromyalgia ever. That would be a welcome development regarding the naysayers who still believe that FM is not real or is a psychological disease.

Results

The findings suggested that basic, easy to identify aspects of the FM patients physiology had been disturbed. Adding the sympathetic skin response to the mix boosted their accuracy in identifying FM patients correctly to about 98% and the sensitivity to 100%.

Increased latency times seen in the sympathetic skin test FM patients indicated that their systems were responding much more slowly than usual to the electrical impulses. They didn’t manifest the kind of obliterated responses sometimes seen in diabetic patients – where no SSR response is found at all – but the increased response times suggested some damage had occurred.

The researchers were able to identify FM patients with astounding accuracy using mostly simple tests.

The researchers were able to identify FM patients with astounding accuracy using mostly simple tests.

Increased latency times have been associated with increased anxiety in another study. That finding brought to mind a recent post on Facebook which asked why even small things now bothered her/him so much? That’s a question I’ve been asking myself for decades. My guess is that a tweaky autonomic nervous system is involved.

Small Fiber Neuropathy and Fibromyalgia – A Short Review

This study and others indicate that is becoming an ever more interesting place in FM. A flurry of findings in 2014 suggested that from 30-40% of FM patients had a condition called small fiber neuropathy (SFN). Small fiber neuropathy refers to damage to the small, unmyelinated nerve fibers found in our skin and elsewhere.

That finding shocked researchers who’d presumed that the damage to FM patients stopped below their heads. Since that time several studies have validated those results. The question now is not whether SFN exists in FM, but how prevalent it is and why it’s occurring. Some work is being done in the both those areas.

Just last year a Spanish study suggested that reduced mitochondrial activity and increased oxidative stress in the skin of FM patients could play a role.

Earlier this year Martinez-Lavin’s findings of decreased corneal nerve thickness suggested that the damage to the peripheral nerves in FM wasn’t confined to the unmyelinated C-nerve fibers in the skin; i.e whatever was happening to FM patients could be happening in other types of nerves. Martinez-Lavin’s study also introduced an easy to use and non-invasive testing methodology. (No skin punches needed.) (The corneal nerve issues found do not affect sight by the way.) Caro and Winter have reported they’ve found evidence of large fiber neuropathy in FM as well.

Besides the skin unmyelinated or “C” nerve fibers are also found in the dorsal of the spinal cord and reach up into brain stem and thalamus.

The most intriguing study, however, popped up just two months. Sommer’s comparison of nerve fiber density the greatest reductions in nerve fiber diameter in the FM patients.

Expect the unexpected

Something different than expected may be going on in the skin of people with FM…

That entirely unexpected finding suggested a different kind of pathology is occurring in FM than in other people with SFN. In fact, Sommers called what she found “small fiber pathology” instead of small fiber neuropathy to distinguish it from the more common forms of small fiber neuropathy.

At least one other study is underway. Anne Oaklander hypothesizes that the present SFN testing regimens misdiagnose over half the adults under the age of 35 experiencing widespread pain. She’s in the midst of a multi-million dollar NIH-funded study to see if that’s so.

She’ll be examining a wide variety of tests (including corneal tests) to determine which tests best identify SFN in people with widespread pain. She’ll also attempt to figure out what’s causing SFN using blood tests and a close examination of the skin. Finally, she’ll assess how effective several treatments are.

The $3 million or so study began last year, and it’s slated to end (ouch) in 2020. I imagine, though, that it’s proceeding step by step, and we’ll find out if the rates for SFN will double in younger adults soon. That result would surely focus more interest on SFN.

 

 

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