Systematic Reviews
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatry. Apr 19, 2022; 12(4): 615-622
Published online Apr 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i4.615
Lidocaine in fibromyalgia: A systematic review
Jozélio Freire de Carvalho, Thelma L Skare
Jozélio Freire de Carvalho, Health Sciences Institute, Federal University of Bahia, Salvador 40231-300, Brazil
Thelma L Skare, Rheumatology Unit, Evangélico Mackenzie Hospital, Curitiba 80730-420, Brazil
Author contributions: de Carvalho JF and Skare TL contributed equally to this work; de Carvalho JF and Skare TL designed the research study, performed the research, and analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript; all authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Jozélio Freire de Carvalho, MD, PhD, Adjunct Professor, Health Sciences Institute, Federal University of Bahia, Rua das Violetas, 42, ap. 502, Salvador 40231-300, Brazil. jotafc@gmail.com
Received: March 19, 2021
Peer-review started: March 19, 2021
First decision: May 5, 2021
Revised: May 15, 2021
Accepted: February 23, 2022
Article in press: February 23, 2022
Published online: April 19, 2022
Abstract
BACKGROUND

Fibromyalgia (FM) patients are treated with antidepressants, and in most cases, these drugs lose efficacy or present side effects. Intravenous lidocaine (IL) is an anesthetic drug used in some FM trials.

AIM

To systematically review the safety and efficacy of IL in FM patients.

METHODS

To systematically search PubMed for articles in English, Spanish, and Japanese with English Abstracts on FM and lidocaine between 1966 and February 2021. This study was registered at PROSPERO.

RESULTS

We found only ten articles published in this field, with a total of 461 patients. Females predominated varying from 95% to 100% in the studies. Age varied from 40.9 to 55 years old. Disease duration varied from 1 mo to 6.4 years. Lidocaine dose varied from 2 to 7.5 mg/kg via intravenous infusion. Follow-up period varied from 65.7 to 90 days. Regarding outcomes, most studies used the visual analogue scale (VAS) for pain; before short-term lidocaine administration, VAS was between 6.1 and 8.1 and after treatment was between 1.7 and 4.5 mm. Concerning long term lidocaine, VAS varied from 30% to 35.4% after lidocaine infusion. Side effects were observed in 0% to 39.6% of cases, they were usually mild or moderate.

CONCLUSION

This study demonstrates the short-term effectiveness and safety of intravenous lidocaine in FM patients. However, more studies, including long-term follow-up, are still needed.

Keywords: Lidocaine, Fibromyalgia, Pain, Intravenous infusions

Core Tip: This is the first systematic review on lidocaine studies in fibromyalgia patients.