The Danish National Rehabilitation Center for Neuromuscular Diseases conducted a study on pain in girdle myopathies (LGMD). It brought together 121 adult patients, aged 19 to 86, who responded to a questionnaire.
Analysis of their responses shows that:
- 65.7% of patients say they suffer from chronic pain, versus 16% in the general population (cancer pain excluded);
- 44.7% of patients have daily or constant pain for more than three months;
- 21% of patients have chronic pain but not daily;
- the localization of pain is often multiple, the most evoked sites being the back (57% of cases) and neck (48% of cases);
- paracetamol is the analgesic most used by these patients;
- chronic pain has a moderate impact on daily activities but a significant impact on quality of life and psychological health (anxiety and depression).
Another study, English, conducted on 502 people with LGMDR9 (formerly LGMD2I) from the FKRP registry also showed that 87% of participants reported having pain at the time of the study. These pains were non-neurogenic, variable in intensity and duration for 69% of cases. These results underline the importance of systematically looking for the existence of pain in patients with LGMD, in order to better manage them.
