New blood test developed for chronic disease that usually affects women

Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain together with fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. As women are more likely to suffer from it than men, and for years doctors knew too little about it, they often told women that it was “just in your head.”

Many people who have fibromyalgia also suffer from tension headaches, depression, anxiety, temporomandibular joint (TMJ) disorders (like grinding teeth), migraine, painful bladder syndrome, and irritable bowel syndrome.

Researchers now believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way the brain and spinal cord process painful and non-painful signals. Symptoms often begin after physical trauma, surgery, infection, or significant psychological stress.

Sleep is often disrupted by pain, and many patients with fibromyalgia have other sleep disorders, such as restless legs syndrome and sleep apnea. A symptom commonly referred to as “fibro-fog” impairs the ability to focus, pay attention and concentrate on mental tasks. Sometimes, however, symptoms gradually accumulate over time with no single triggering event.

It can easily be confused with other disorders like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, osteoarthritis or chronic low back pain. This means that reaching a diagnosis is not easy or quick and, therefore, ends up having an impact on the quality of life and mental health of the people who suffer from it.

While there is no cure for fibromyalgia, a variety of medications have been used to control symptoms. Exercise, relaxation and stress-reduction measures also may help.

Now, a research team from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Catalonia (Spain), the University of Ohio and the University of Texas has developed an innovative method that allows fibromyalgia to be reliably diagnosed from a blood sample.

Identifying the disease

Identifying this disease nowadays is highly complex, especially because the symptoms are similar to those of other rheumatic pathologies and persistent COVID-19. This new study, they said, represents an important step forward in the accurate diagnosis and personalization of treatment for patients, and at the same time opens new avenues for research into this pathology and clinical care.

The results of the study have been published in the journal Biomedicines under the title “Early Diagnosis of Fibromyalgia Using Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Combined with Chemometrics.”

To carry out the study, the researchers collected blood samples from three different groups – people diagnosed with fibromyalgia; those with similar rheumatic diseases; and those without any of these pathologies, who served as a control group. A combination of techniques was used to isolate and analyze specific chemical signals in the blood that could help differentiate fibromyalgia from other diseases with similar effects on health, with the aim of opening a more accurate and faster diagnostic pathway.

The blood samples underwent a process called filtration that allows the focus to be put on a very specific part of the blood that contains small molecules, known as the low-molecular-weight fraction. These molecules can include a variety of substances like amino acids that act as the building blocks of proteins.

To analyze these tiny molecules, the researchers used the technique of Raman spectroscopy, which consists of “illuminating” the samples with a special laser light and studying how they react and makes it possible to observe which molecules are present and in what quantities, based on the way light interacts with them. To further refine this process, they also used gold nanoparticles that increase the signal they receive from the small molecules and make the results clearer and easier to interpret.

With the help of a statistical method, the samples were classified into categories on the basis of their chemical characteristics so that the differences between groups could be determined. The results highlighted that some patterns in small molecules like amino acids could serve as “chemical signatures” to distinguish fibromyalgia from other diseases.

“This tool is fast, accurate and non-invasive, and can easily be integrated into the clinical environment to improve the quality of life of patients with fibromyalgia,” said Sílvia de Lamo, a researcher from the URV’s chemical engineering department who played a part in the research during a stay at Ohio University where she collaborates with two research groups specializing in vibrational spectroscopy as a method for diagnosing diseases. The tool, which is still in the validation phase, could be available in health centers in about two years, according to the research team.