Fibromyalgia – a poorly understood condition that causes extreme tiredness, fatigue, muscle weakness, emotional distress and widespread pain throughout the body. Most common fibromyalgia symptoms are widespread pain, the dominating view points relats fibromyalgia to the dysfunction in the nervous system. But recently new research is published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation suggests the fibromyalgia may actually be caused by antibodies that interact with the nervous system of the person, making at an autoimmune disease.
The King’s-led study, in collaboration with University of Liverpool and the Karolinska Institute, shows that lots of fibromyalgia symptoms are caused by antibodies which increase the activity of pain-sensing nerves.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in US, fibromyalgia affects at least 2 percent of the adults and more than 80% of them are women (similar to many others autoimmune conditions). The prevalence rises to 10% to 30% among patients diagnosed with autoimmune rheumatological conditions. There is no cure so far, but few treatments around are exercise, OTC drugs, stress reduction, lifestyle changes and natural treatments.
Ever person fibromyalgia symptoms are different, that make it tough to diagnosis and treat. FibromyalgiaResources have conducted the survey on why fibromyalgia patients have random symptoms, you can also read the summarize findings here. Due to limited scientific and medical understanding of the causes of fibromyalgia in the first place, development of new methods and therapies are lagging behind, but with this new research finding, there are possibilities of seeing improvment now.
Research Summary: This research findings have shown that many of the symptoms in fibromyalgia are caused by antibodies that increase the activity of pain-sensing nerves throughout the body. The results show that fibromyalgia is a disease of the immune system, rather than the currently held view that it originates in the brain.
