Histological Underpinnings of Grey Matter Changes in Fibromyalgia Investigated Using Multimodal Brain Imaging.

ABSTRACT: Chronic pain patients present with cortical gray matter alterations, observed with anatomical magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. Reduced regional gray matter volumes are often interpreted to reflect neurodegeneration, but studies investigating the cellular origin of gray matter changes are lacking. We used multimodal imaging to compare 26 postmenopausal women with fibromyalgia with 25 healthy controls (age range: 50-75 years) to test whether regional gray matter volume decreases in chronic pain are associated with compromised neuronal integrity. Regional gray matter decreases were largely explained by T1 relaxation times in gray matter, a surrogate measure of water content, and not to any substantial degree by GABA_A receptor concentration, an indirect marker of neuronal integrity

SUBMITTER: Pomares FB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6596849 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature