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).