A new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association brings hope to people suffering from a debilitating and painful ailment known as fibromyalgia. The researchers haven’t been able to find any cure for this condition so far. However, it appears that antidepressants relieve some of its symptoms, boosting sufferers’ quality of life, study lead author Dr. Winfried Hauser, of Klinikum Saarbrucken in Germany and his colleagues said.

 

Fibromyalgia is characterized by wide spread pain with no clear cause, fatigue, sleep problems and depressed mood. The condition affects up to 12 million people or 4 percent of the US population, nearly 11 million of them women. Since it has no cure, doctors usually prescribe exercise and relaxation techniques, painkillers and sometimes low-dose antidepressant to treat the symptoms.

 

Now, German researchers seem to have made a huge step forward in helping people suffering from this condition. They examined 18 studies involving 1,427 fibromyalgia patients, taking either low classes of antidepressants, including low doses of tricyclic and tetracyclic antidepressants (TCAs), or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRI) and monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs).

 

The study found that monoamine oxidase inhibitors, serotonin reuptake inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants helped patients by reducing pain and fatigue. Moreover, the drugs were also good at improving patients’ mood and at giving them the possibility to get better nights rest.

 

Long-term effects of antidepressants are not yet known. Therefore, however optimistic the findings of this study may sound, “effects should be re-evaluated at regular intervals to determine whether benefits outweigh adverse effects. The identification of patient characteristics associated with positive and negative therapeutic outcomes are needed to better target antidepressant therapy for [fibromyalgia],” the authors of the study wrote.