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Analyses unsupportive of strong connection between fibromyalgia, weather
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Most evidence did not support a uniform influence of weather on daily fatigue or pain among women with fibromyalgia, according to recent study results.
“Many fibromyalgia patients report that certain weather conditions seem to aggravate their symptoms,” researcher Ercolie R. Bossema, PhD, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said in a press release. “Previous research has investigated weather conditions and changes in fibromyalgia symptoms, but an association remains unclear. Our analyses provide more evidence against, than in support of, the daily influence of weather on fibromyalgia pain and fatigue.”
Researchers in the Netherlands studied 333 women with fibromyalgia (mean age, 47 years; mean time since diagnosis, 3.5 years) who answered questions on pain and fatigue for 28 consecutive days. Air temperature, sunshine duration, precipitation, atmospheric pressure and relative humidity were recorded by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, and data underwent multivariate regression analysis.
One hundred ninety patients answered questions each day. Forty-seven percent of all assessed days had precipitation. Weather variables showed a significant but small effect on pain or fatigue in 10% of 50 analyses. Patients were differentially affected by some weather conditions, including high pain with either low or high barometric pressure, according to 10 analyses, which showed significant small differences between patients seen in random effects of weather variables.
“These individual differences were explained neither by demographic, functional or mental patient characteristics, nor by season or weather variation during the assessment period,” the researchers reported.
“This study is the first to investigate the impact of weather on fibromyalgia symptoms in a large cohort,” Bossema said. “Our findings show no association between specific fibromyalgia patient characteristics and weather sensitivity.”
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