Pain medicine : the official journal of the American Academy of Pain Medicine
-
Review
An evolutionary stress-response hypothesis for chronic widespread pain (fibromyalgia syndrome).
The study aimed to seek a unifying biological basis for the phenomena encompassed in fibromyalgia syndrome (chronic widespread pain and associated morbidities). ⋯ Drawing on diverse findings in neurobiology, immunology, physiology, and comparative biology, we suggest that the form of central sensitization that leads to the profound phenomenological features of chronic widespread pain is part of a whole-organism stress response, which is evolutionarily conserved, following a general pattern found in the simplest living systems.