Fibromyalgia

Abstract

Clinicians often encounter individuals who present with pain that they cannot adequately explain based on the degree of damage or inflammation noted in peripheral tissues. This typically prompts an evaluation looking for a cause of the pain. If no cause is found, these individuals are often given a diagnostic label that merely connotes that the patient has chronic pain in a region of the body, without an underlying mechanistic cause. Fibromyalgia (FM) is merely the current term for widespread musculoskeletal pain for which no alternative cause can be identified. This review covers the epidemiology, etiology/genetics, pathophysiology and pathogenesis, diagnosis, differential diagnosis, treatment, and complications and prognosis of FM. Figures show underlying mechanisms that can cause chronic pain; an individual’s “set point” or “volume control setting” for pain as set by a variety of factors, including the levels of neurotransmitters that either facilitate pain or reduce pain transmission; the 2011 Fibromyalgia Survey Criteria; symptoms and syndromes frequently seen in individuals with FM; the distribution of the 2011 Fibromyalgia Survey scores in a large cohort of individuals undergoing joint replacement surgery; and an algorithm showing the importance of dually focused treatment for FM and other chronic pain conditions. Tables list clinical characteristics of centralized pain, pharmacologic therapies for FM, and nonpharmacologic therapies for FM. This review contains 6 figures, 9 tables, and 78 references. Keywords: Fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, headache, temporomandibular joint disorder, gastrointestinal disorder, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), nonulcer dyspepsia, or esophageal dysmotility,  interstitial cystitis, chronic prostatitis, vulvodynia, vulvar vestibulitis, and endometriosis