Central sensitization: a biopsychosocial explanation for chronic widespread pain in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome

In addition to the debilitating fatigue, the majority of patients with chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) experience chronic widespread pain. These pain complaints show the greatest overlap between CFS and fibromyalgia (FM). Although the literature provides evidence for central sensitization as cause for the musculoskeletal pain in FM, in CFS this evidence is currently lacking, despite the observed similarities in both diseases. The knowledge concerning the physiological mechanism of central sensitization, the pathophysiology and the pain processing in FM, and the knowledge on the pathophysiology of CFS lead to the hypothesis that central sensitization is also responsible for the sustaining pain complaints in CFS. This hypothesis is based on the hyperalgesia and allodynia reported in CFS, on the elevated concentrations of nitric oxide presented in the blood of CFS patients, on the typical personality styles seen in CFS and on the brain abnormalities shown on brain images. To examine the present hypothesis more research is required. Further investigations could use similar protocols to those already used in studies on pain in FM like, for example, studies on temporal summation, spatial summation, the role of psychosocial aspects in chronic pain, etc

Telemonitoring: Criteria for a Sustainable Implementation

The use of information and communication technologies appears to a main lever to ensure effectiveness and efficiency of modern health care systems. In particular, telemonitoring is one of the most promising concepts in order to enable patients??? self-management, relocate medical services and improve equity in access to high quality care. However, a large-scale adoption of telemonitoring solutions is still barely accomplished all over Europe. Considering the several dimensions of a system???s implementation, this chapter provides insight on the reasons for the slow diffusion of these innovations in the health sector. Subsequently it illustrates how to leverage on these systems and outlines what the different stakeholders need to contribute in order to bridge the gap between pilot projects and diffusion of telemonitoring solutions

Expectations and regime robustness in price formation: evidence from vector autoregressive models and recursive methods

Expectations, Export prices, LQAC-model, VAR model, EqCM-model, Lucas critique, C51, C52, D84, E31,