Fibromyalgia Support Group for Surrey and Sussex

World Congress on Pain

Jo Fisher attended this conference in Glasgow, in company with Lindsey Middlemiss, Chair of FibroAction, and Daniel Austen, from the London FMS/ME/CFS Clinic. The conference was organised by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) and took place on Monday 18 August in Glasgow. Lindsey has kindly written the following report for us.

Dan, Jo and I travelled to Glasgow separately over the weekend and on Sunday evening, we all went to dinner with Carla Maclaren, the Glasgow GP who has fibromyalgia. Carla is interested in helping raise awareness of fibromyalgia across the UK and I feel that her unusual experience of being both doctor and patient could be extremely valuable.

We attended the conference on the Monday and found that the conference venue, the SECC, which is huge, was a relevation in itself, as was the information that there were 5,000 delegates attending - pain is obviously big news in the international medical community.

There was a huge number of stands on everything from drugs to pain associations and rows and rows of poster displays (363 on Monday). The one of most interest to us was ‘Fibromyalgia: Impaired Top-Down Control during Anticipatory Pain Relief’, describing a study by Canadian researchers showing that, although anticipating pain can lead to greater perceived pain levels, the physical pain response in patients with fibromyalgia is extreme, maintained and unaffected by whether patients think that something will hurt or not - more proof that fibromyalgia is a real condition that causes increased levels of pain physically.

The researchers concluded that:

"...[the pain reading in fibromyalgia] cannot be reduced to a psychological epiphenomenon, but rather suggest a true neurological disturbance."

We got the opportunity to talk to the researcher presenting the poster and we were delighted to find that he had a fantastic in-depth knowledge of fibromyalgia.

Many of the posters weren't relevant to fibromygia, being more concerned woth acute pain, opioids and CRPS. But there were three other posters directly relevant to fibromyalia being displayed on Monday.

The highlight of the conference for the fibromyalgia community, and our reason for attending on Monday, was Daniel Clauw MD's talk on 'Stress and Chronic Pain: Lessons Learned from Fibromyalgia'. Dr Clauw, a Professor of Medicine at the University of Michigan, USA, is an internationally renowned expert on Fibromyalgia. It was a highlight of our trip simply that there was a talk on fibromyalgia!

Hearing Dr Clauw's talk was amazing. It backed up everything that FibroAction have been saying about fibromyalgia and it was incredible to sit in a 3,000 seat auditorium, listening to an accurate, evidence based lecture about fibromyalgia - what this must have done for the credibility of fibromyalgia in the minds if the thousands of doctors and researchers present.

After the talk, Dan, Jo and I met with Daniel Clauw, and also with Patrick Wood. It was fascinating to talk to both of them about fibromyalgia and the situation in the UK, where we are years behind the US in terms of awareness. That evening we took Patrick Wood out to dinner, which really made the Congress for me. As the originator of the Dopamine Theory of Fibromyalgia, Dr Wood's theories and the research that has come from them are responsible for the use of dopamine agonists in fibromyalgia. I take a dopomine agonist and owe my ability to attend such events as the Congress to the improvement I have found whilst on this medicine. I feel that I personally owe Dr Wood (and Dr Andrew Holman who investigated the use of Pramipexole as a treatment for fibromyalgia) a great deal and it was a real honour to sit across a dinner table from him and have the opportunity to ask and answer questions.

Lindsey Middlemiss is Chair of FibroAction, website www.fibroaction.org