Painful fibromyalgia may be caused by the wrong kind of gut microbes

The gut microbiome may play a role in the chronic pain condition fibromyalgia. Based on experiments in mice and humans, a faecal microbiota transplant (FMT) from people with fibromyalgia induces its painful symptoms, which can be relieved by an FMT from those without the condition.

Fibromyalgia, which affects around 2 per cent of people in the UK and US, is characterised by widespread pain over the body, often with no clear cause.

Researchers have previously observed differences in …