ArticleBMC rheumatology2022
Effect of vitamin B12 on the symptom severity and psychological profile of fibromyalgia patients; a prospective pre-post study.
Article in BMC rheumatology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT06338059 (Relationship Between Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 Levels and Neuropathic Pain in Lipedema), which is not on this map. Cited by 6 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Relationship Between Vitamin D and Vitamin B12 Levels and Neuropathic Pain in Lipedema:Cross Sectional Study
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- Management of Fibromyalgia: Novel Nutraceutical Therapies Beyond Traditional Pharmaceuticals.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Neuronutritional Approach to Fibromyalgia Management: A Narrative Review.Pain and therapy · 2024Review
- Common Non-Rheumatic Medical Conditions Mimicking Fibromyalgia: A Simple Framework for Differential Diagnosis.Diagnostics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- What Do We Know about Nociplastic Pain?Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Efficacy of mecobalamin (vitamin BBMJ open · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFibromyalgia (FM) as a prototypical nociplastic pain condition displays a difficult therapeutic situation in many cases. Given the promising data on the effect of vitamin B12 in improving pain and cognitive functions in various nociplastic pain conditions, we aimed to determine the efficacy of 1000 mcg daily dose of oral vitamin B12 on the symptom severity and psychological profile of FM patients.
methodsThis open-label, pre-post study was performed on FM patients whose diagnoses were confirmed by a rheumatologist based on the 2016 American College of Rheumatology (ACR). Patients were instructed to take a daily dose of 1000mcg vitamin B12 for fifty days. Outcome measures including the Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQR), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), 12-item Short-Form health survey (SF-12), and pain Visual Analog Scale (pain-VAS) were fulfilled by patients before and after the treatment.
resultsOf 30 eligible patients, 28 patients completed the study protocol. Patients were female with a mean age of 47.50 ± 8.47 years. FIQR scores in all domains improved significantly after treatment (total FIQR: 49.8 ± 21.86 vs 40.00 ± 18.36, p value < 0.01; function: 13.17 ± 7.33 vs 10.30 ± 5.84, p value: 0.01; overall: 10.32 ± 6.22 vs 8.25 ± 6.22, p value: 0.03; symptoms: 26.30 ± 10.39 vs 21.44 ± 8.58, p value < 0.01). Vitamin B12 also improved anxiety scores from 9.33 ± 4.30 to 7.70 ± 3.60, p value: 0.01. Depression, pain-VAS, and SF-12 didn't improve following the treatment. The Generalized estimating equations (GEE) analysis showed the improvement in total FIQR score is not cofounded by the improvement of anxiety and patients' baseline characteristics.
conclusionsThis study showed a short course of sublingual vitamin B12, 1000 mcg daily, significantly improves the severity of FM and anxiety score. We postulate that vitamin B12 has a strong potential to consider, at least, as adjunctive therapy of FM.
trial registrationThe study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of Guilan University of Medical Sciences (IR.GUMS.REC.1400.197) in accordance with the World Medical Association's code of ethics (Declaration of Helsinki, revised in Brazil 2013), and registered at an ICMJE and WHO recognized registry of clinical trials ( www.irct.ir ) on 28/08/2021 (registration number: IRCT20200920048782N1).
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