Exercise and obesity in fibromyalgia: beneficial roles of IGF-1 and resistin?

What Was Tested

Researchers studied IGF-1 LR3 in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The aim was to examine effects of exercise on fatigue, in lean, overweight and obese FM patients.

Why It Was Studied

Severe fatigue is a major health problem in fibromyalgia (FM).

Obesity is common in FM, but the influence of adipokines and growth factors is not clear.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 48 patients were involved.

PubMed indexes the participants as adults and middle-aged adults, women only.

In a longitudinal study, 48 FM patients (median 52 years) exercised for 15 weeks.

Nine patients were lean (body mass index, BMI 18.5 to 24.9), 26 overweight (BMI 25 to 29.9) and 13 obese.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got IGF-1 LR3 and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

The timeline in the abstract includes 15 weeks.

Fatigue was rated on a 0 to 100 mm scale (fibromyalgia impact questionnaire [FIQ] fatigue) and multidimensional fatigue inventory (MFI-20) general fatigue (MFIGF).

Higher levels in FIQ fatigue and MFIGF indicate greater degree of fatigue.

Free and total IGF-1, neuropeptides, adipokines were determined in serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay, Exercise Therapy, Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Insulin-Like Growth Factor I, Longitudinal Studies and Obesity.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of IGF-1 LR3 in 48 patients over 15 weeks.

Its findings take up roughly 15 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2013 (Arthritis research & therapy), a journal based in England.

More context: the IGF-1 LR3 compound page, all human trials.