The explanation of the scientific reason behind “fibromyalgia syndrome”, scientifically known as “fibromyalgia”, has remained mysterious for years, which has exacerbated the suffering of about 2 to 4% of people, and made them fight severe, continuous and spreading pain throughout the body without knowing its true cause.
After 5 years of pain that could not be explained by tests and x-rays, the doctor diagnosed the condition of the thirty-year-old Egyptian woman, Asmaa Mahmoud, as a patient with fibromyalgia syndrome, but Asmaa and her doctor do not know for sure the exact reason behind her acute pain turning into chronic pain spreading throughout the body.
In an attempt to provide a broader answer to the question of millions of patients around the world, scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States of America presented their study, which was published in The Journal of Neuroscience in January 2026, a scientific explanation that reveals a neural pathway in the brain that plays “a crucial role in transforming acute pain into chronic pain.”
New study
Researchers have discovered that this pathway is located in a part of the brain called the granulobasal cortex, a small but highly influential area of persistent pain.
Scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder followed the “mice” on which they conducted experiments to find out what happens in the brain after an injury to this nerve (CGIC), and they used modern techniques called chemogenetics, which is precise genetic control, enabling them to turn on or turn off a specific group of nerve cells in the brain.
“Our paper used a variety of state-of-the-art approaches to identify the specific brain circuit that is critical for deciding whether pain will become chronic and telling the spinal cord to carry out these instructions,” says study lead author Linda Watkins, a professor of behavioral neuroscience in the College of Arts and Sciences.
“If this critical decision maker is silenced, chronic pain will not occur, and if chronic pain is already there, it goes away,” she adds.
When the researchers turned off the CGIC nerve pathway in the brain, acute pain did not turn into chronic pain. When it was disabled in mice that were suffering from chronic pain, the pain almost disappeared.
Types of pain
The study explains the difference between types of pain, as acute pain differs from chronic pain in its mechanism of action. Acute pain serves as a temporary warning signal, which begins when an injured tissue – such as a damaged toe – sends a signal to the spinal cord and from there to the pain center in the brain.
Chronic pain is a false alarm, as pain signals continue in the brain for weeks, months, or even years after the initial injury has healed.
Connected effort
The new study is considered an extension of a previous approach by the same researcher, Linda Watkins, who published a study in 2011 in the Journal of Neuroscience, in which she noticed that this region in the brain, the “insular lobe,” is strongly activated in people who suffer from chronic pain, but the problem was that there was no way to study its role accurately, because the only way to influence it was to remove it surgically, which is not possible to use as a treatment for humans.
But by linking the two studies, the researchers found that this region in the brain sends signals to another part of the brain that processes physical sensation, which in turn sends signals to the spinal cord to keep the pain going. Hence comes the explanation of a phenomenon known to chronic pain patients, where ordinary touch turns into chronic pain.
Pain for no reason
Fibromyalgia is considered one of the most mysterious diseases in which scientists do not know precisely its main cause. According to the British Health Service (NHS), chronic muscle pain is believed to be linked to abnormal levels of certain chemicals in the brain and changes in the way the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, and nerves) processes pain messages that are transmitted throughout the body.
According to the British Health Service, it is estimated that one in every 20 people is affected by fibromyalgia, which is more common among women than men, and there is no specific treatment yet.
Although all the x-rays and tests that Asmaa performed over the five years had good results, when the doctor diagnosed her with fibromyalgia, he told her that “this disease has no cure.”
Palliative treatments
In its definition of fibromyalgia, the US National Institute of Arthritis and Muscle Diseases states, “There is no cure for fibromyalgia, but doctors can help manage and treat symptoms.”
During her journey with chronic pain, doctors prescribed Asmaa varying doses of treatments for the symptoms accompanying the pain and not to treat the main cause of the pain. “Antidepressants, analgesics, and anti-inflammatories” were the only way to alleviate the severity of the pain, as the pain remained present without stopping.
Hope for treatment
Hence the importance of the new findings discovered by the researchers in explaining the neural pathway of chronic pain, as it opens the door to discovering an effective treatment for people with chronic pain whose causes are not understood, which was confirmed by Linda Whitkins in the summary of the study, saying: “Now that we have access to tools that allow manipulation of the brain, the search for new treatments is proceeding much faster.”
The door of hope has become open to scientists, which may help in developing new treatments for chronic pain that rely on targeting nerve cells in the brain instead of traditional analgesics.