ANN ARBOR, Mich., May 6 (UPI) -- Researchers at the University of Michigan and in Germany report treating a depressed patient in chronic pain with psychiatric drugs doesn't lessen the pain.
The study used brain imaging to determine if chronic pain in depressed patients with fibromyalgia improved after the patients took an antidepressant. It did not, according to researchers writing in the May issue of Arthritis & Rheumatism.
The study is significant, researchers said, because doctors often treat depression and fibromyalgia as a related syndrome; as many as 54 percent of people with chronic pain also have a major depressive disorder.
The level of depression, though, proved to be unrelated to the intensity of the pain, the researchers concluded.
"There is an incorrect impression among many doctors that if you treat a patient's depression, it will make their pain better. Not so," said Dr. Daniel J. Clauw, a study author. "If someone has pain and depression, you have to treat both."
Fibromyalgia involves tenderness to touch, stiffness and fatigue and affects several million Americans, mostly women.
