Martínez-Lavín, Manuel · Reumatologia clinica · 2018 · DOI
Some people have reported developing chronic pain and autonomic symptoms (problems with heart rate, blood pressure, and sweating) after receiving the HPV vaccine. This article reviews whether this connection is real and suggests that if it exists, these cases might share similarities with fibromyalgia—a condition involving widespread pain and nervous system dysfunction. The authors propose that understanding fibromyalgia's mechanisms could help diagnose and treat patients who develop symptoms after HPV vaccination.
This work addresses the overlap between post-vaccination adverse events and conditions like ME/CFS and fibromyalgia that involve autonomic dysfunction and pain. Understanding whether vaccination can trigger dysautonomic syndromes has implications for patient recognition, diagnostic criteria, and therapeutic approaches. The proposed mechanistic framework may be relevant to understanding how various triggers initiate chronic illness in susceptible individuals.
This is a review article that does not present new experimental data or establish causation between HPV vaccination and the described syndrome. The abstract does not provide case numbers, statistical analysis, or comparison with unvaccinated controls. The debate about whether this syndrome exists remains contested in the medical literature, and this review does not resolve that controversy with definitive evidence.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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