Today I had lunch with a friend with Fibromyalgia(FM) brought on by antibiotics for pneumonia, or the pneumonia itself. It is really impossible to know which is the cause. He was interested in the probiotics approach, and I promise to summarize what we know (from PubMed) on fibromyalgia and probiotics.
What I found on PubMed.com was:
- Nothing for “fibromyalgia probiotics”
- One article for “fibromyalgia microbiome” – Alterations in intestinal microbial flora and human disease. 2008, which provided nothing significant and [Relation between fibromyalgia and bacterial urine]. 1998 that lacked a summary.
- Looking at specific species I found Fecal microbiota in early rheumatoid arthritis, 2008 which reported “In comparison to patients with FM, the RA patients had significantly less bifidobacteria and bacteria of the Bacteroides-Porphyromonas-Prevotella group, Bacteroides fragilis subgroup, and Eubacterium rectale–Clostridium coccoides group.“
- Also an interesting 1954 study Treatment of rheumatic disease by desensitization with an aqueous extract of Streptococci. I. Fibrositis and hypertrophic arthritis. which lacks a summary.
- We do find Functional bowel symptoms, fibromyalgia and fatigue: a food-induced triad? 2012, found ” Extra-intestinal symptoms suggestive of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia were demonstrated in 85% and 71%, respectively.“
So the bottom line is that this approach has not been investigated for FM – except for a study against RA patients (but not against healthy controls). Doing general google searches found nothing that did not appear to be opinion based on belief.
With this sparse information, we end up looking back at irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), which has had probiotic studies. On PubMed there are 340+ studies where they are cited together. This leads us to Prescript-Assist and Align as two probiotics that have been shown in studies to be successful. It should be noted that neither contains any Lactobacillus species.
