The biology of symptom-based disorders – time to act

TY - JOUR

T1 - The biology of symptom-based disorders – time to act

AU - Goebel, Andreas

AU - Andersson, David

AU - Shoenfeld, Yehuda

N1 - Funding Information: The authors wish to thank Dr. Ann Lyons, Bristol, and Dr. John Wiles, Liverpool for important suggestions to the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2022

PY - 2022/10/22

Y1 - 2022/10/22

N2 - Symptom-based disorders are conditions that are characterised mostly by somatic symptoms rather than objectively identifiable signs. They are very common, including pain and fatigue disorders, functional gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders, and others, and they cause far greater disability than diseases where signs are prominent. Such conditions may sometimes be triggered by infection, as in Post Covid Syndrome (Cabral-Marques et al., 2022; Baiocchi et al., 2022) or physical or psychological trauma. By employing passive immunoglobulin transfer experimental approaches, recent research in several ‘unexplained’ chronic pain conditions has demonstrated that pathogenic IgG autoantibodies can explain several of these conditions' core symptoms and are ubiquitous in patients with severe phenotypes. The promise from placing positive resources into exploring the role of ‘invisible’, functional, non-inflammatory autoantibodies in symptom-based disorders across additional areas of Medicine includes patient empowerment and the development of new diagnostic tests and therapies.

AB - Symptom-based disorders are conditions that are characterised mostly by somatic symptoms rather than objectively identifiable signs. They are very common, including pain and fatigue disorders, functional gastrointestinal and respiratory disorders, and others, and they cause far greater disability than diseases where signs are prominent. Such conditions may sometimes be triggered by infection, as in Post Covid Syndrome (Cabral-Marques et al., 2022; Baiocchi et al., 2022) or physical or psychological trauma. By employing passive immunoglobulin transfer experimental approaches, recent research in several ‘unexplained’ chronic pain conditions has demonstrated that pathogenic IgG autoantibodies can explain several of these conditions' core symptoms and are ubiquitous in patients with severe phenotypes. The promise from placing positive resources into exploring the role of ‘invisible’, functional, non-inflammatory autoantibodies in symptom-based disorders across additional areas of Medicine includes patient empowerment and the development of new diagnostic tests and therapies.

KW - Chronic pain

KW - FIBROMYALGIA

KW - autoimmune

KW - Autoantibody

KW - Symptom-based disorder

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85142887149&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.autrev.2022.103218

DO - 10.1016/j.autrev.2022.103218

M3 - Review article

SN - 1568-9972

JO - AUTOIMMUNITY REVIEWS

JF - AUTOIMMUNITY REVIEWS

M1 - 103218

ER -