Is there an association between fibromyalgia and below-normal levels of urinary cortisol?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19102778?dopt=AbstractPlus
ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Adynamia in fibromyalgia (FM) may be an expression of a functional deficit of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and be associated with below-normal levels of urinary cortisol. Our aim was to demonstrate that urinary cortisol was lower in patients with FM than in healthy subjects. FINDINGS: We measured urinary cortisol levels for a sample of 47 women aged 29 to 64 years (mean age 53 years), diagnosed with FM 2-3 years previously, and compared the results with those for a control sample of 58 healthy women of a similar age. Samples of 24-hour urine were appropriately collected and levels of urinary cortisol were measured using the fluorescence polarization immunoassay method. The mean cortisol value for the women with FM was 65.40+/-27.10 microg/L, significantly lower than the mean cortisol level for the control group, at 90.83+/-38.17 microg/L (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Our study confirms that women with FM have significantly lower urinary cortisol levels than healthy women.
PMID: 19102778 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
