What are Scientific Abstracts?

Each year the majority of new fibromyalgia scientific research is presented at the annual American College of Rheumatology(ACR) meetings in late October or early November.  This year Jan Chambers and Rae Gleason attended the November ACR meeting which was held in Washington, D.C., and viewed most of the fibromyalgia scientific posters as well as discussed presented work with the scientific authors of the studies.  Attending medical meetings helps the NFMCPA continue to be on the cutting edge of the newest information concerning possible fibromyalgia treatments and diagnostic techniques.  They also attended several relevant fibromyalgia and related medical condition presentations.   More in depth reporting from this year’s ACR meeting will be shared in upcoming issues of the Fibromyalgia & Chronic Pain LIFE magazine.  Additional abstracts will be offered in NFMCPA Advocate Newsletters.

Click the link below to view a poster abstract which was selected as one of this year’s podium presentations.  It concerns a study involving neurostimulation, a type of fibromyalgia treatment that uses a skull cap with electrodes which give small electrical charges to the scalp. The treatment is painless, and the electrical stimulation cannot be felt.  Studied at the University of Michigan, some excellent, preliminary outcomes concerning pain and other symptoms were shown.  This abstract is not about the actual treatment process but to assess changes in brain functional network connectivity (FC) in fibromyalgia (FM) patients treated with Reduced Impedance Noninvasive Cortical Electrostimulation (RINCE). Previous studies using fMRI have reported increased FC in FM, and pain reduction has been shown to correlate with reduced FC following intervention (Arthritis Rheum. Epub 2012).  Researchers explored the notion that FC, as evaluated by electroencephalography (EEG) coherence, would be reduced by treatment with RINCE and associated with clinical improvements.  Click below to view the abstract.