Highlights
- •People with fibromyalgia (FM) show greater reactivity to prepulse facilitation than healthy controls do.
- •People with FM show no difference in reactivity to prepulse inhibition than healthy controls do.
- •Activities that decrease autonomic drive may be useful for people with FM.
- •Activities that increase vagal tone may be useful for people with FM.
- •Augmentation of auditory prepulse facilitation may represent a biomarker for FM.
Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to determine whether auditory prepulse inhibition
(PPI) and/or prepulse facilitation (PPF) were altered in people with fibromyalgia
(FM) when compared with controls. Eyeblink responses were recorded from 29 females
with FM and 27 controls, while they listened to 3 blocks of auditory stimuli that
delivered pulses with either PPI or PPF. Using a linear mixed model, our main findings
were that there was a GROUP*CONDITION interaction (F4, 1084 = 4.01, P= .0031) indicating that the difference in amplitude between FM group and control
group changed depending on the condition (PPI or PPF). Post hoc tests revealed no
differences between the groups in response to PPI. The FM group showed a greater reactivity
of response to the PPF conditioned stimulus than the control group did (t(39.7) = 2.03,
P= .0494). Augmentation of PPF, as demonstrated by the FM group is thought to be linked
to alterations in information processing mediated by an autonomically driven general
orienting process. Activities that decrease autonomic drive or rebalance autonomic
and parasympathetic tone such as vagal stimulation might be pursued as effective interventions
for people with FM.
Perspective
This article presents evidence of preservation of neural circuitry that underpins
response suppression and evidence of neural circuit disturbance mediated by autonomic
drive-in people with FM. These results are important because intact circuitry underpins
the effectiveness of therapies and may be harnessed, and rebalancing autonomic drive
may be indicated.
Key words
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: March 20, 2021
Accepted:
March 5,
2021
Received in revised form:
March 4,
2021
Received:
September 11,
2020
Footnotes
GLM has received support from: Reality Health, ConnectHealth UK, Seqirus, Kaiser Permanente, Workers’ Compensation Boards in Australia, Europe and North America, AIA Australia, the International Olympic Committee, Port Adelaide Football Club, Arsenal Football Club. Professional and scientific bodies have reimbursed him for travel costs related to presentation of research on pain at scientific conferences/symposia. He has received speaker fees for lectures on pain and rehabilitation. He receives book royalties for books on pain and rehabilitation. CB has received support from Kaiser Permanente and speaker fees for lectures on pain and rehabilitation.
CB was supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) (grant number 1127155); GLM and SBW were supported by a Leadership Investigator grant from the NHMRC of Australia (grant number 1178444); AMHR was supported by the VI Plan Propio de Investigación, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain (grant number PP2016-5922).
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© 2021 by United States Association for the Study of Pain, Inc.
