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Association between alcohol consumption and symptom severity and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia

Overview of attention for article published in Arthritis Research & Therapy, March 2013
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (91st percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (88th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
1 news outlet
twitter
7 X users
patent
1 patent
facebook
2 Facebook pages

Citations

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62 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
102 Mendeley
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Title
Association between alcohol consumption and symptom severity and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia
Published in
Arthritis Research & Therapy, March 2013
DOI 10.1186/ar4200
Pubmed ID
Authors

Chul H Kim, Ann Vincent, Daniel J Clauw, Connie A Luedtke, Jeffrey M Thompson, Terry D Schneekloth, Terry H Oh

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Although alcohol consumption is a common lifestyle behavior with previous studies reporting positive effects of alcohol on chronic pain and rheumatoid arthritis, no studies to this date have examined alcohol consumption in patients with fibromyalgia. We examined the association between alcohol consumption and symptom severity and quality of life (QOL) in patients with fibromyalgia. METHODS: Data on self-reported alcohol consumption from 946 patients were analyzed. Subjects were grouped by level of alcohol consumption (number of drinks/week): none, low (≤3), moderate (>3 to 7), and heavy (>7).Univariate analyses were used to find potential confounders, and analysis of covariance was used to adjust for these confounders. Tukey HSD pairwise comparisons were used to determine differences between alcohol groups. RESULTS: Five hundred and forty-six subjects (58%) did not consume alcohol. Low, moderate, and heavy levels of alcohol consumption were reported for 338 (36%), 31 (3%), and 31 patients (3%), respectively. Employment status (P <0.001), education level (P = 0.009), body mass index (P = 0.002) and opioid use (P = 0.002) differed significantly among groups with drinkers having higher education, a lower BMI, and a lower frequency of unemployment and opioid use than nondrinkers. After adjusting for these differences, the measures including the number of tender points (P = 0.01), FIQ total score (P = 0.01), physical function (P <0.001), work missed (P = 0.005), job ability (P = 0.03), and pain (P = 0.001) differed across groups, as did the SF-36 subscales of physical functioning (P <0.001), pain index (P = 0.002), general health perception (P = 0.02), social functioning (P = 0.02), and the physical component summary (P <0.001). Pairwise comparison among the 4 groups showed that the moderate and low alcohol drinkers had lower severity of fibromyalgia symptoms and better physical QOL than nondrinkers. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates that low and moderate alcohol consumption was associated with lower fibromyalgia symptoms and better QOL compared to no alcohol consumption. The reasons for these results are unclear. Since recent studies have demonstrated that γ-Aminobutyric Acid (GABA) levels are low in fibromyalgia, and alcohol is known to be a GABA-agonist, future studies should examine whether alcohol could have a salutary effect on pain and other symptoms in fibromyalgia.

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X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 7 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 102 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Spain 2 2%
Israel 1 <1%
Brazil 1 <1%
United Kingdom 1 <1%
United States 1 <1%
Unknown 96 94%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 14 14%
Student > Ph. D. Student 11 11%
Researcher 11 11%
Student > Master 11 11%
Professor > Associate Professor 9 9%
Other 26 25%
Unknown 20 20%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 36 35%
Nursing and Health Professions 9 9%
Psychology 8 8%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 7 7%
Social Sciences 4 4%
Other 10 10%
Unknown 28 27%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 17. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 24 September 2020.
All research outputs
#2,108,029
of 25,371,288 outputs
Outputs from Arthritis Research & Therapy
#361
of 3,380 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#16,992
of 209,704 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Arthritis Research & Therapy
#4
of 35 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,371,288 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,380 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 9.2. This one has done well, scoring higher than 89% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 209,704 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 35 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its contemporaries.