User:The Back Pain2
Introduction Fibromyalgia is a The Back Pain Breakthrough disease characterized by widespread muscle pain, and variable associated clinical symptoms such as depression, fatigue and gastrointestinal disturbances. The hallmark of fibromyalgia is this consistent pattern of symptoms without laboratory, imaging or other objective findings that could explain them. In other words fibromyalgia is a disease of exclusion. A disease of exclusion means that all blood work, imaging or other diagnostics tests for other conditions (like for example arthritis) is negative.
It is tempting for physicians who can not find an objective explanation for a patient's signs and symptoms to dismiss the condition as psychosomatic. In other words, suggesting that the patient's symptoms are emotional in nature and are not real. Simply put, all in the patient's head. This certainly has been the case with fibromyalgia. It is a common scenario where patients present to their doctors with vague complaints of widespread muscle pain, fatigue and depression and doctors unable to find any reason for these symptoms on blood tests and other standard diagnostic procedures.
Since widespread body aches are the cardinal feature of fibromyalgia, early research into the disease focused on the muscles and their connecting tissue. At first it appeared that patients suffering from fibromyalgia demonstrated abnormalities in muscle structure or metabolism of both. These early studies unfortunately were unsophisticated and subsequent studies revealed no evidence of either structural of functional abnormities in patients who fit the specific modern-day diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. This created two problems related to the field of fibromyalgia research.
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