100,000 Danes with severe muscle pain have now received biological proof of their disease.

100,000 Danes with severe muscle pain have now received biological proof of their disease

A large international research project confirms that fibromyalgia is a disorder of the nervous system.

Fibromyalgia manifests as pain in bones, joints, and muscles. Currently, fibromyalgia cannot be cured. Archive photo (Photo: © Mads Claus Rasmussen, Ritzau Scanpix)

For years, the disease fibromyalgia has caused severe pain for up to 100,000 Danes, without doctors being able to find specific causes for their problems.

But now researchers have taken an important step closer to understanding the disease and, not least, how it should be categorized.

A large international research project, involving 5,000 Danes, confirms that fibromyalgia is a disorder of the nervous system and that the pain therefore has a biological cause.

The result has been published in the renowned journal Nature Medicine, which Berlingske has also described.

According to the researchers, it provides "a solid biological basis for a condition that has long been the subject of debate."

Research leader Thomas Folkmann Hansen, professor in Translational Neurogenetics and Multiomics at DTU Health Technology and Rigshospitalet, has led the Danish part of the study.

He calls the result "relatively groundbreaking" because, first and foremost, it counters the ignorance that people with fibromyalgia have often encountered.

"This is a patient group that has been tossed between different medical specialties," he says, explaining that fibromyalgia has been categorized differently over the years – ranging from being a mental illness to a muscle pain disease.

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Has analyzed genetic data

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The research team examined genetic data from more than 2.5 million adults in seven countries. They found that there are 26 regions in the genome that affect the risk of developing fibromyalgia.

"We have found 26 genes, and they explain up to about 10 percent of the cause of fibromyalgia," he says.

The new results are good news for the many people suffering from the disease.

"It provides a better understanding, both when you are met by others, but also that the disease has a biological cause. I think that is very reassuring to know, rather than not knowing anything about where it comes from," says Thomas Folkmann Hansen to P1 Morgen.

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Cannot explain everything

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However, genetics cannot explain the entire disease mechanism.

"Even people who carry many of the risk variants will probably only develop fibromyalgia when other factors come into play – for example, a painful joint disease or other triggering events," says Thomas Folkmann Hansen to Berlingske.

The new knowledge also cannot be used to treat the disease right now. But it is an important step along the way.

"It is impossible to know whether it will take one, five, or ten years, but it is certainly a shorter time than if we knew nothing," says Thomas Folkmann Hansen.

You can hear the full interview with Thomas Folkmann Hansen on P1 Morgen here:

Warning: This article was translated by a Large Language Model, in case of doubt, you can always visit the original source.