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Short-term efficacy of topical capsaicin therapy in severely affected fibromyalgia patients
Rheumatology International, 07/31/2012
Casanueva B et al. – Patients severely affected by fibromyalgia can obtain short–term improvements following topical capsaicin 0.075 % treatment three times daily for 6 weeks.
Methods- One hundred and thirty fibromyalgia patients were randomly divided into two groups.
- The control group, 56 women and 4 men who continued their medical treatment, and the capsaicin group, 70 women who apart from continuing their medical treatment, also underwent topical capsaicin 0.075 % 3 times daily for 6 weeks.
- At the beginning of the program, there were no significant differences between the two groups in any of the analyzed parameters.
- At the end of the treatment, there were significant improvements in the capsaicin group in the myalgic score (5.21 vs 3.8, p = 0.02) and global subjective improvement (22.8 vs 5 %, p = 0.001).
- Six weeks after the end of the treatment, the experimental group showed significant differences in Visual Analogue Scale of depression (5.63 vs 7.35, p = 0.02), Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (67.89 vs 77.7, p = 0.02), role limitations due to emotional problems (36.17 vs 17.2, p = 0.05), Fatigue Severity Scale (6.2 vs 6.6, p = 0.04), myalgic score (3.94 vs 2.66, p = 0.02) and pressure pain threshold (79.25 vs 56.71, p = 0.004).