Fibromyalgia

A speaker at the 2021 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology-West shared how some osteoporosis guidelines conflict, leading to debates in the management of the disease.

Small fiber neuropathy, a pain-inducing condition that resembles and overlaps with fibromyalgia, may be significantly under-diagnosed in the U.S., according to a presenter at the 2021 Congress of Clinical Rheumatology-West.

In this Healio Video Perspective from the AWIR Annual Conference, Leonard Calabrese, DO, RJ Fasenmyer Chair of the Center for Clinical Immunology at Cleveland Clinic, discusses his presentation on “long COVID-19,” which includes theories on why some patients experience prolonged effects, how autoimmune mechanisms come factor in and the biomedical effort that will go into answering these questions.

Patient education in combination with a variety of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic therapies are necessary to adequately manage fibromyalgia, noted a speaker at the 2021 Rheumatology Nurses Society annual conference.

Patients with chronic non-inflammatory musculoskeletal disease often experience sexual dysfunction and negative effects on their relationships because of their condition, according to a meta-analysis published in Arthritis Care & Research.

High disease activity and widespread pain in patients with axial spondyloarthritis are associated with the development of fibromyalgia, according to data published in Rheumatology.

Most fibromyalgia therapies lack strong evidence, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Patients with fibromyalgia, osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis are at an increased risk for self-harm, compared with those without these diseases, according to findings published in Arthritis Care & Research.

To a nonmedical professional, the placebo effect is a fairly straightforward concept: give someone a sugar pill, tell them it is medicine, they think they get better. But the reality of what the placebo effect has come to mean in the current health care setting is something entirely different, and more complicated.

We are privileged to have a stellar group of discussants in this issue of Healio Rheumatology addressing the multiple facets of the placebo effect in the field of rheumatology. For a long time now, the ‘placebo effect’ has represented little more than a troublesome obstacle that clinical investigators — in the course of clinical trials with our growing armamentarium of therapeutics — must overcome to demonstrate that a drug or therapy is truly effective.