Fibromyalgia impact in the prefrontal cortex subfields: An assessment with MRI

Previous studies have associated brain abnormalities in people with fibromyalgia with accelerated brain ageing. The prefrontal cortex is located in the anterior pole of the mammalian brain. It is defined as the part of the cerebral cortex that receives projections from the mediodorsal nucleus of the thalamus.

This study aimed to evaluate the volumetric differences in the prefrontal cortex subfields between healthy women and women with fibromyalgia using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and controlling for age, estimated intracranial volume, depression, and cognitive impairment.

A total of 47 women with fibromyalgia (recruited from a fibromyalgia local association) and 43 healthy women (retrieved from the Open Access Series of Imaging Studies database) participated in this cross-sectional study. Multiple linear regressions were used to predict the value of the prefrontal cortex subfields as well as to determine if there were volumetric differences between the groups.

Volume of all prefrontal cortex regions decreased with each year of age. Healthy women showed higher volume in all the prefrontal cortex subfields than women with fibromyalgia. Regarding partial correlations performed, no significant relation were found between the fibromyalgia impact and the brain volumes analyzed, controlling for depression.

Women with fibromyalgia showed reduced volume in the right caudal middle frontal gyrus, rostral middle frontal gyrus, left inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis, inferior frontal gyrus pars triangularis, inferior frontal gyrus pars orbitalis, lateral orbitofrontal cortex, right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right rostral anterior cingulate gyrus subfields of the prefrontal cortex and total gray matter compared to healthy women. Furthermore, through an analysis of multiple linear regressions, the left rostral middle frontal gyrus and left lateral orbitofrontal cortex showed significantly volumetric decreases related to depression levels. The total gray matter also shows a significant decrease related to age observed through the analysis of multiple linear regressions. No significant relation were found between the impact of the disease and the brain volumes analyzed, controlling for depression in women with fibromyalgia.