Brain Imaging Study on Biomarkers for Fibromyalgia

Drugs used for managing Fibromyalgia pain have not proven to be effective and pain continues to cost Canadians $60 billion a year without truly helping those who suffer. The study proposes to investigate the factors related to a person that can enhance or reduce the effectiveness of pain treatments in people suffering with Fibromyalgia pain. Treatment response to painkillers in a person may be related to their brain, social, and psychological makeup. The investigators aim to study these factors to identify and develop feasible and robust indicators based on a person's biological makeup (also called biomarkers). These biomarkers will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people. These measures will offer new opportunities for improving treatment such as by tailoring treatment to meet the specific needs of each patient based on his/her biological and psychological makeup. Towards the specific aim, data will first be collected in several experimental domains for studying treatment expectations (cognitive, psychosocial, brain-related). These 'experimental' data will be compared between Fibromyalgia (FM) and healthy participants to yield new understanding of the factors that govern treatment response. At the end of experimental data collection, the investigators will collect data in the 'clinical' domain. Hence, at the end of the experimental sessions, a subset of FM participants will receive a mock drug (placebo disguised as an approved pain treatment) and another subset will provide pain ratings only and hence serve as a waiting list control for the placebo trial. Data will be studied in steps to understand factors that mediate treatment outcomes and finally the investigators will use advanced computational tools used for big data analysis and aim to identify factors that can be used as biomarkers and precision medicine tools.