L-Tyrosine Supplementation in Patients With Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia

Diet, Fibromyalgia, Pain, Drug, Amino-acid, Fatigue

Patients in the study, who have a diagnosis of fibromyalgia, will be randomly assigned to take the amino acid L-tyrosine or placebo (blank pill) for 3 weeks. They will fill out questionnaires about their symptoms and see if they have any improvement. The investigators hypothesis is that taking tyrosine will help alleviate the symptoms of fibromyalgia.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome with few treatment options available. The amino-acid L-tyrosine is the precursor for norepinephrine in the central nervous system (CNS). Norepinephrine in the CNS has important roles in pain and mood modulation and descending inhibition of pain pathways. By giving the precursor L-tyrosine in high doses we believe that we can increase levels of norepinephrine in the CNS. To study this question we designed a randomized blinded pilot study of 30 patients. Patients are randomly assigned to one of 3 groups (placebo, tyrosine 1000mg/day, and tyrosine 2000mg/day.) for 3 weeks. Patients then complete the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) daily and the Fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) on day 1 and day 21. Patients also complete a drug diary. They are monitored weekly for progress during the study.

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United States