Fibromyalgia Syndrome - more common than it is believed

Fibromyalgia is quite barely known disease. However, it is much more common than it is believed. Therefore it might be useful to become acquainted with this problem and find out how to cope with it.

Fibromyalgia is a non inflammatory chronic rheumatic disorder. Main symptoms of fibromyalgia include widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by muscle and periarthritic tissue stiffness, chronic tiredness, insomnia or restless sleep, headache, depression, anxiety. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), overactive bladder (OAB), restless legs syndrome (RLS), Raynaud's syndrome are also often observed. Fibromyalgia syndrome is difficult to diagnose because of lack of unambiguous clinical criteria, lack of specific laboratory markers, lack of specific changes in imaging examinations (NMR, CT, X-ray, USG). Due to these facts the diagnosis of fibromyalgia is based on physician, rheumatologist most often, clinical experience.

The underlying cause of FMS remains unknown, therefore there is no casual treatment of this disease. The applied therapy aims alleviation of symptoms and improvement on quality of life mainly. The painkillers are ineffective in vast majority of cases.