Total-body PET for assessing myofascial pain

Chronic low back pain due to myofascial pain syndrome is a widespread and
debilitating condition, with substantial clinical and socioeconomic
impact. Despite its prevalence, there remains a critical lack of objective
and reproducible biomarkers for diagnosis and therapeutic assessment.
Conventional methods for evaluating myofascial pain rely primarily on
subjective clinician assessment and patient report, which are subject to
high inter-observer variability and may provide only limited insight into
tissue-level pathology. This project leveraged total-body positron
emission tomography/computed tomography (TB-PET/CT) using a dual-tracer
approach: [11C]Butanol for tissue perfusion quantification and [18F]FDG
for assessment of glucose metabolism and, exploratorily, tissue perfusion.
By integrating information from these tracers, the study aimed to dissect
the biological underpinnings of painful versus non-painful myofascial
tissues, with participant-reported outcomes collected simultaneously. This
study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Center for
Complementary and Integrative Health, via grant R61 AT012187, titled:
Total-body PET for assessing myofascial pain (PIs: Abhijit J
Chaudhari; Lorenzo Nardo). More information is also available at
ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT05876858).