Dr. Sharon Erdrich holds a Master of Health Science from the University of Auckland and a Doctorate from the University of Sydney. She has been a registered nurse for more than 40 years and practises in Auckland, New Zealand. Oral Health Associated with Chronic Pain New research suggests that microbes in our mouths may play a surprising role in conditions like fibromyalgia and migraine. By the time a patient with fibromyalgia reaches a clinic, they’ve often been told their pain is a brain-based amplification with few obvious causes. People with fibromyalgia commonly experience fatigue, disrupted sleep, cognitive difficulties and heightened sensitivity to touch and pressure. Dr. Sharon Erdrich was teaching a course on diagnostic pathophysiology when she began learning more about fibromyalgia—a condition often deemed idiopathic. Dr. Erdrich is a clinician and researcher whose doctoral work at the University of Sydney, Australia, examined chronic pain and the microbiome. “I’d never been happy with the purely symptomatic, reductionist approach,” she says. “There had to be something common in people who suffer from idiopathic pain, such as fibromyalgia and migraine, that drives their pain.” Her work has zeroed in on an unlikely contributor: the mouth. When she began her doctoral project, oral health wasn’t even part of the plan. She intended to look at the microbiome broadly, focusing on gut health in women with fibromyalgia. But when a microbiome analysis partner offered oral samples 26 | 2025 | Issue 6 Issues and People
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