The role of defective antioxidant defense in primary fibromyalgia syndrome

Abstract

Primary fibromyalgia syndrome (PFS) is a pathological condition involving generalized muscular pain, multiple tender points, fatigue, abnormal muscle metabolism and sleep disturbance. Despite comprehensive academic inter¬est and studies, the etiology of this condition is not completely understood. Besides, there,are similar muscular find¬ings among PFS and equine postanaesthetic myositis in which free radicals may play a significant role in the patho-genesis. The presented study has been performed to investigate the capacity of intracellular antioxidant defense in PFS. To achieve this goal, erythrocyte superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT) activities in 22 patients with PFS and 20 healthy persons (control group) were determined. In the PFS group, SOD and CAT activities were signif¬icantly lower than control (p