Why is Basic Research Important to Understanding Fatigue?
Basic research has improved our understanding of what factors – both within and outside the body – trigger the disease process, and is important to understanding fatigue. It seeks to discover how systems work and to develop a knowledge base that scientists can use to achieve practical goals, such as treatments or cures for diseases. By providing this new knowledge, basic biomedical research, such as that supported by the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS), forms the foundation for advances in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of diseases.
Why are Clinical and Behavioral Research Important to Understanding Fatigue?
Clinical and behavioral research helps scientists to understand health and disease in humans. Improved understanding of health and disease often allows scientists to translate research findings into improved patient care. Clinical research includes clinical trials, behavioral research, health services research, epidemiology (where and how often a disease appears), translational research (which moves basic advances into the clinic), and community-based research.
Clinical trials allow scientists to test interventions designed to prevent, treat, or cure disease. For example, NIAMS-funded researchers are following a set of lupus patients from three well-defined ethnic groups-Hispanic, African American and Caucasian-as part of the LUpus in MInorities: NAture versus Nurture (LUMINA) study. So far, researchers have found that a variety of factors contribute to increased fatigue in lupus patients. These factors include older age, Caucasian ethnicity, lack of health insurance, inadequate coping strategies, higher degree of disease activity, helplessness, and pain. By understanding these factors, researchers hope to design therapies aimed at overcoming this common and often disabling symptom. Researchers also hope to uncover how and why fatigue occurs in certain individuals.
Behavioral research is designed to further our understanding of behavioral functioning and provide knowledge needed for better prediction, prevention, and control of diseases. The NIAMS currently supports a clinical trial designed to test cognitive-behavioral therapy as a treatment for insomnia in fibromyalgia patients. Researchers hope the trial results will confirm the usefulness of cognitive-behavioral therapy to reduce sleep disturbances, daytime pain, and fatigue. Cognitive-behavioral therapy combines cognitive therapy, which is designed to change or eliminate thought patterns that contribute to the person’s symptoms, and behavioral therapy, which aims to help the person change his or her behavior.