Abstract
We herein report results of our pilot study using bolus-plus-infusion [11C]raclopride positron emission tomography (PET) scanning to assess endogenous dopamine (DA) release associated with unpredictable monetary rewards in patients with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) and healthy controls. The aim of this project was to investigate whether FMS was associated with a dysfunction of the central reward system.
Twenty-four women with FMS, based on the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria for FMS, and 17 age-matched healthy women were included in the study. Eleven of the patients with FMS met the DSM-V criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) [1] (current and past depressive episode). A slot machine task validated by Martin-Soelch et al. [2], which has been shown to reliably induce equilibrium and task-related changes in raclopride binding, was used to measure endogenous DA release in response to unpredictable rewards. PET examinations were performed on a full ring PET/computerized tomography (CT) scanner with a 15.3-cm axial field of view in 3-dimensional mode (Discovery DSTX, GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, USA), at the Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland. The emission data were corrected for attenuation, scatter, random, and dead time using the corresponding CT (120 kV/80 mA), and reconstructed using filtered back projection.
Ledermann, Katharina