MCP-1 and IL-8 as pain biomarkers in fibromyalgia: a pilot study.

Pain Med 12(8):1154-61 (2011) PMID 21714842

Although fibromyalgia (FM) is traditionally a non-inflammatory condition, emerging data also suggest that FM has an immunologic component. Previous studies have reported that peripheral blood concentrations of two chemokines (i.e., interleukin-8 [IL-8] and monocyte chemotactic protein-1 [MCP-1]) were elevated in FM patients compared with normal controls. We sought to determine the longitudinal relationships of changes in the levels (picogram/mL) of IL-8 and MCP-1 with changes in the severity of FM-related pain.