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Anxiety, depression expressed stronger association than disease severity among fibromyalgia patients
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Patients with fibromyalgia exhibited symptoms, including photosensitivity and Raynaud’s phenomenon, that showed a greater association with anxiety, depression and somatization as opposed to disease severity and antinuclear antibody positivity in a recent study.
Researchers in Turkey comparatively studied 232 women diagnosed with fibromyalgia (FM) and an age-matched control group that included patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE; n=78) and healthy volunteers (n=70) from 2009 through 2010. Participants’ antinuclear antibodies (ANA) were evaluated based upon reported rheumatic disease-associated symptoms, and questionnaires, including the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), were used to determine anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms and neuropathic pain levels. The FM cohort had its pain severity and other symptoms measured using a visual analog scale.
Raynaud’s phenomenon (RP; 22% vs. 10%; P=.026) and photosensitivity (27.6% vs. 11.4%; P=.005) were more common among FM patients than controls, and SLE patients exhibited a greater frequency of photosensitivity than FM patients and healthy controls (P<.001).
SLE patients (98.7%) also showed a higher incidence of ANA positivity compared with FM (11.8%) and control groups (7.1%). Researchers also learned that FM patients with photosensitivity and RP had greater anxiety (P=.002, photosensitivity; P=.004, RP), somatic symptoms (P=.015; P<.001) and neuropathic pain (P=.03; P=.02) scores than controls. Likewise, the FM cohort with RP had higher depression scores (P=.001) than the others.
“We observed that FM-related pain, fatigue, FIQ functional item scores had no association with ANA positivity, photosensitivity or RP,” the researchers concluded. “Another remarkable result was that photosensitivity was associated with anxiety and somatization; RP was associated with anxiety, depression and somatization.
“As a result, it might be suggested that the probability of positively responding to connective tissue disease symptoms in FM patients is related with the presence of anxiety, depression and somatization which set the stage for FM.”
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