Spa therapy effective, safe for fibromyalgia

Spa therapy helps improve symptoms in patients with fibromyalgia without triggering unwanted adverse events (AE), a recent study has found.

Researchers conducted an open, randomized clinical trial of 218 fibromyalgia patients who received either immediate (n=110) or delayed (n=108) spa therapy lasting for 18 days. The main study endpoint was the number of patients reaching minimal clinically important difference (MCID) after 6 months. MCID was defined as a 14-percent change from baseline fibromyalgia impact questionnaire (FIQ) scores.

A significantly greater proportion of patients who received immediate spa therapy achieved MCID at 6 months than their delayed control counterparts (45.0 percent vs 28.3 percent; p=0.013). This corresponded to a more than twofold higher odds of treatment success with immediate intervention (odds ratio [OR], 2.07, 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.16–3.69).

Moreover, a decrease in FIQ scores between 15–30 percent was reported for 20.9 percent of patients the intervention arm vs only 17.4 percent of controls. Change in FIQ scores over 6 months was likewise statistically different between groups (p=0.001), such that 18.7 percent of the intervention participants showed only mild impairment at this time point as opposed to 6.1 percent of controls (p=0.008).

In terms of safety, a total of 33 serious AEs (SAE) were recorded over the study duration, occurring in 25 patients. No between-group difference was detected: 11 intervention patients developed 13 SAEs, as compared with 20 SAEs in 14 controls.

“Our results suggest that the assessed spa therapy provides a long-term beneficial clinical effect for patients suffering from moderate to severe fibromyalgia. Spa therapy can be considered as one of the potential nondrug therapies in a multidisciplinary approach to the management of fibromyalgia,” the researchers said.