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Fibromyalgia patients reported learning disability symptoms

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WASHINGTON — Patients with fibromyalgia reported more symptoms and features of a learning disability compared with patients with other rheumatoid diseases in research presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting.

“If patients have widespread pain, and you really have to ascertain whether the pain is widespread … those kinds of patients may have fibromyalgia,” researcher Robert S. Katz, MD, professor of medicine at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told Healio.com. “ … They also have cognitive issues. One of the cognitive issues amounts to what looks like learning disability.” 

 

Robert S. Katz

Eighty-five patients with fibromyalgia (FMS), 39 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 21 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and 14 controls without rheumatic disease completed questionnaires about difficulties in reading, writing, body awareness/spatial relationships and oral expressive language. Scores were compared by using Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests, and percentages were compared with chi-square test of association, with a 0.05 significance level.

Patients with FMS had significantly worse reading and oral expressive language scores compared with controls (P=.001) and worse scores in all areas compared with the RA and SLE groups (P<.001-.007). The four groups’ scores displayed no statistical differences.

Researchers reported that FMS patients were significantly more likely to report these difficulties:

• Making mistakes when reading like skipping words or lines (FMS, 43%; controls, 0%; RA, 3%; SLE, 5%; P<.001)
• Reading the same line twice (FMS, 57%; controls, 14%; RA, 15%; SLE, 19%; P<.001)
• Remembering what was read (FMS, 59%; controls, 0%; RA, 11%; SLE, 24%; P<.001)
• Understanding the main idea or identifying important details from a story (FMS, 27%; controls, 0%; RA, 5%; SLE, 14%; P=.007)
• Grammar or punctuation (FMS, 28%; controls, 14%; RA, 8%; SLE, 0%; P=.004)
• Tendency to be clumsy or uncoordinated (FMS, 41%; controls, 7%; RA, 10%; SLE, 10%; P<.001)
• Hand-eye coordination (FMS, 27%; controls, 7%; RA, 5%; SLE, 5%; P=.004)
• Expressing self in words (FMS, 42%; controls, 7%; RA, 8%; SLE, 5%; P<.001)
• Finding the right words to say in a conversation (FMS, 57%; controls, 8%; RA, 11%; SLE, 24%; P<.001)
• Getting to the point of a conversation (FMS, 43%; controls, 7%; RA, 5%; SLE, 5%; P<.001)

“A lot of these patients are very challenged in school situations or find it difficult in their jobs because they have manifestations of a learning disability,” Katz said. “We rheumatologists aren’t ready to diagnose them with that. But we can screen them for that and send them to the appropriate experts.”

For more information:

Katz RS. P956: Learning Disability in Fibromyalgia Patients: FMS Patients Report More Language and Spatial Difficulties. Presented at: American College of Rheumatology 2012 Annual Meeting; Nov. 10-14, Washington.