Diagnosis Delays with AS and Fibro It's important to be aware of the overlap of AS and fibro symptoms, especially for women. Most fibromyalgia patients are women, and it's common for women with AS to be misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia.
Several rheumatic diseases can mimic fibromyalgia. These include sero-negative rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Lyme disease, polymyalgia rheumatica and lupus. They have symptoms of widespread pain along with joint involvement.
AS is an autoimmune disease that causes pain and inflammation of the spine and sacroiliac joints. fibromyalgia is a musculoskeletal condition that causes widespread muscle pain and symptoms like headaches, severe fatigue, mood problems, and sleep issues.
Your doctor may order imaging studies to help diagnose ankylosing spondylitis: X-rays help doctors see joint changes. However, you may have the disease for years before the changes show on x-rays. Doctors may use x-rays to monitor the progression of the disease or to rule out other causes for the joint pain.
Lupus. Lupus is an autoimmune disease, meaning the immune system of a person with lupus will attack normal cells as if they were outside invaders. This can cause inflammation, tissue damage, and pain throughout body, which feels very much like the widespread body pain of fibromyalgia.
“They don't tell you about the emotions you will have to deal with every single day, the grief for the person you used to be, the guilt you'll feel every time you let someone down and cancel plans, the fear of the future and the feeling of being a burden to your family.
Unfortunately, fibromyalgia is still a somewhat controversial diagnosis, because it is not yet fully understood and its symptoms can overlap with many other conditions.
Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a chronic, inflammatory disease of the axial spine. Chronic back pain and progressive spinal stiffness are the most common features of this disease.
In 2009, two new classification terms were introduced: axial spondyloarthritis (axial SpA) and peripheral spondyloarthritis (peripheral SpA). The new terms do not replace the traditional, specific spondyloarthritis diagnoses (e.g. ankylosing spondylitis).
Of the 497 people who completed the questionnaires, 121 (24.3 percent) had fibromyalgia, based on the ACR criteria. But only 104 (20.9 percent) were actually diagnosed with the condition by a physician. In all, physicians failed to correctly diagnose 60 (49.6 percent) of those who met the ACR criteria for fibromyalgia.
Fibromyalgia is diagnosed based primarily on having pain all over the body, along with other symptoms. Currently, there are no specific laboratory or imaging tests for fibromyalgia.
It's unlikely that you'll need an MRI for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue syndrome unless your particular set of symptoms is similar to that of a neurological illness that requires evaluation with an MRI. You may also need an MRI at some point to diagnose an injury or a different illness.
Fibromyalgia and ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) are common, long-term medical conditions. Both are now widely recognized as real illnesses, not psychological problems.
But unlike many musculoskeletal conditions, fibromyalgia isn't an inflammatory or autoimmune disease — when your immune system, which normally protects your body from infection, turns against itself and attacks your own cells and tissues. That can produce chronic inflammation that can eventually damage your body.
The main symptoms of fibromyalgia are: Chronic, widespread pain throughout the body or at multiple sites. Pain is often felt in the arms, legs, head, chest, abdomen, back, and buttocks. People often describe it as aching, burning, or throbbing.
The drugs amitriptyline, duloxetine, milnacipran and pregabalin can relieve fibromyalgia pain in some people. They may cause side effects such as a dry mouth or nausea. Normal painkillers like ibuprofen or acetaminophen (paracetamol) aren't recommended for the treatment of fibromyalgia.
The pain from fibromyalgia is more widespread, while rheumatoid arthritis is concentrated initially to hands, wrists, knees and balls of the feet.