What do we know about Music Interventions for Fibromyalgia?

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a complex chronic disease, characterized by a widespread chronic pain condition in pressure points located at specific muscle and tendon sites and frequently associated with a variety of dysfunctions such as persistent fatigue, sleep disorders, different types of headache, anxiety and mood disorders. To address clinical symptoms, various treatments have been proposed: pharmacological and non-pharmacological intervention based on an individualized treatment program. As for non-pharmacological intervention it is possible to find many researches evaluating music therapy or music interventions on FM patients. Therefore, the aim of this review was to observe the findings of the available music therapy interventions in FM and to portrait a state-of-the-art on the subject. To identify suitable publications, an online search of PubMed database was conducted with the following keywords: “Music therapy”, “Music”, “Music intervention” and “Fibromyalgia”. We therefore selected only the experimental studies containing music therapy for FM patients. Amongst the twelve analyzed studies the majority of them have successfully applied music therapy, showing a positive improvement of quality of life and pain reduction. Moreover, as far as instruments uniformity between the studies is concerned, measurement of pain is fairly uniform; on the contrary, we detect heterogeneity concerning other measures. Furthermore, future studies, including in the intervention protocol a music preference questionnaire, are needed to personalize the participants experience and increase adherence to the intervention. For future research, we highlight the relevance of a defined music therapy protocol, also in the form of passive listening, possibly in agreement with the World Federation of Music Therapy guidelines on music therapy interventions.