Shaver, Joan L · The Nursing clinics of North America · 2004 · DOI
This article reviews fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS), a condition causing chronic pain and fatigue that affects far more women than men. The authors describe common symptoms and discuss research into what might cause FMS and related conditions like ME/CFS, IBS, and TMD, as well as current treatment options.
This review is relevant to ME/CFS patients because it explicitly acknowledges the overlap and shared mechanisms between fibromyalgia syndrome and chronic fatigue syndrome, suggesting common underlying pathophysiology. Understanding how FMS and CFS relate clinically and biologically may inform better assessment and treatment strategies for both conditions.
As a narrative review, this article does not present original research data and cannot prove causation or definitively establish which factors cause FMS or CFS. The review summarizes existing literature but does not constitute evidence for any specific treatment's efficacy or any proposed disease mechanism.
About the PEM badge: “PEM required” means post-exertional malaise was an explicit required diagnostic criterion for participant inclusion in this study — not that PEM was studied, observed, or discussed. Studies using criteria that do not require PEM (e.g. Fukuda, Oxford) are tagged “PEM not required”. How the atlas works →
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