Aim Of The Study: Diabetes mellitus is associated with an increased likelihood of mental disorders, especially depression. Despite a frequently postulated underprovision, the actual need for psychotherapeutic treatment in this patient group has hardly been investigated. The aim of this study is to analyze the care situation of diabetes patients with mental comorbidities in Germany.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroRNAs are tissue-specific expressed short RNAs that serve post-transcriptional gene regulation. A specific microRNA can bind to mRNAs of different genes and thereby suppress their protein production. In the context of the complex phenotype of fibromyalgia, we used the Axiom miRNA Target Site Genotyping Array to search genome-wide for DNA variations in microRNA genes, their regulatory regions, and in the 3'UTR of protein-coding genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: The COVID-19 pandemic, along with the associated restrictions and changes, has had a far-reaching impact on the mental health and well-being of people around the world. The most serious impact can arguably be observed in vulnerable populations, such as chronic pain patients. Using a pre-test/post-test design with pre-pandemic comparative data, the present study sought to investigate how the pandemic impacted chronic pain and well-being in individuals with fibromyalgia (FM) (N = 109).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Previous studies have repeatedly found distinct brain morphometric changes in patients with fibromyalgia (FM), mainly affecting gray and white matter abnormalities in areas related to sensory and affective pain processing. However, few studies have thus far linked different types of structural changes and not much is known about behavioral and clinical determinants that might influence the emergence and progression of such changes.
Methods: We used voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and diffusion-tensor imaging (DTI) to detect regional patterns of (micro)structural gray (GM) and white matter (WM) alterations in 23 patients with FM compared to 21 healthy controls (HC), while considering the influence of demographic, psychometric, and clinical variables (age, symptom severity, pain duration, heat pain threshold, depression scores).
The perceived lack of control over the experience of pain is arguably-one major cause of agony and impaired life quality in patients with chronic pain disorders as fibromyalgia (FM). The way perceived control affects subjective pain as well as the underlying neural mechanisms have so far not been investigated in chronic pain. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the neural correlates of self-controlled compared to computer-controlled heat pain in healthy controls (HC, n = 21) and FM patients (n = 23).
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