Abstract

Background and aim: According to ACR 2011 criteria, Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain for more than 3 months accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Recent reviews show that Mind Body Therapies (MBT) are effective to reduce the majority of FMS symptoms. Rességuier Method (RM) is a MBT that aims to obtain patient nonjudgmental awareness and control of bodily perceptions, which is effective in reducing physical and mental disorders in many rheumatic diseases. The aim of this pilot study is to evaluate the effects of RM on FMS clinical and clinimetric parameters and on neuromuscular hyper excitability (NMH), defined as reduction in the excitability threshold assessed by ischemia-hyperpnea test (IHT).

Patients and methods: Fifty-nine patients (pts), 54 women and 5 men, age 50.33 ± 12.15, were treated with RM, 1 h once a week for 8 weeks. At baseline (T0) and at the end of RM treatment (T1) they were evaluated for NMH by IHT. According to IHT results, pts were considered as negative or positive. They were also assessed for pain (Numeric Rating Scale – NRS; Pain and Regional Pain Scale–RPS), disability (Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire –FIQ and Health Assessment Questionnaire-HAQ), health related quality of life (SF-36) mood disorders (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale-HADS), sleep quality (NRS Sleep) and fatigue (Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy–fatigue: FACIT-f).

Results: At baseline, IHT was negative in 7 (11.86%) FMS pts and positive in 52 (88.14%), while after RM treatment it resulted negative in 28 (47.46%) pts and positive in 31 (52.54%). Our results show significant improvement for pain, RPS, FIQ, HAQ, HADS, sleep quality, FACIT-f, SF_36 Summary Mental Index (SMI) and Summary Physical Index (SPI) (p<0.01 for all the items).

Conclusions: We found a high prevalence of NMH in FMS patients, as assessed by IHT. We confirmed the efficacy of RMon clinimetric measures of FMS symptoms. Moreover, we showed the RM efficacy on NMH that, according to our results, could be considered as one of the therapeutic targets in FMS chronic pain.

Keywords: Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS); Ischemia-Hyperpnea Test (IHT); Electromyography(EMG); Quality of Life (QoL); Rességuier Method (RM); Mind Body Therapies (MBT); Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL)