Fibromyalgia is a type of chronic musculoskeletal pain without a clear peripheral origin of nociception, often associated with depression. The underlying pathophysiology involves changes in a functional network that is related to pain and emotional processing in the central nervous system. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) targeting the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or the occipital nerve (ON) are non-invasive neuromodulation techniques capable of improving fibromyalgia symptoms. This study aims to test the effect of combining two targets of stimulation using tDCS.
We applied ON-tDCS in isolation or coupled with pre-ONS right-anode bifrontal tDCS, and assessed its effect on fibromyalgia using the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire, the Beck depression inventory, and Numeric Rating Scale for pain scores. These measures were compared to a sham control group using repeated measures ANOVA.
The interaction effect of stimulation trials and the protocols of sham versus ON-tDCS was significant for the impact, distress, and pain caused by fibromyalgia (P <0.05). The interaction effect of trials and protocols of sham versus ON-tDCS with bifrontal tDCS was significant for the distress (P <0.01), and showed a trend of improvement for the impact and the pain (P <0.1). Based on the non-significant interaction effect of ON-tDCS versus ON-tDCS with bifrontal tDCS (P >0.1), adding bifrontal tDCS was found not to improve the treatment effect of ON-tDCS in any of the tested clinical outcome measures.
This study suggests that adding right-anode bifrontal tDCS to ONS has no added benefit in improving fibromyalgia related symptoms.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 September 2019.
All research outputs
#23,972,162
of 34,411,289 outputs
Outputs from Clinical journal of pain
#1,719
of 2,290 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#247,490
of 370,744 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Clinical journal of pain
#21
of 29 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,411,289 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 29th percentile – i.e., 29% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 2,290 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 10.2. This one is in the 24th percentile – i.e., 24% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 370,744 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 32nd percentile – i.e., 32% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 29 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 27th percentile – i.e., 27% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
