The Fibro Follies

According to this study (abstracted at FMS Global News), there is a “strong familial aggregation” to fibromyalgia. This knowledge can lead to better medical and pharmacological treatments for fibro, say the authors of the study.

The difficulty with determining genetic links is that in the traditional family environment, those environmental factors are likely to be the same for all family members. This means that while it could be genetics causing the fibromyalgia, it could also be some factor common to all family members with fibromyalgia that’s inherent to the environment in which the family finds itself.

As this article from About.com states:

Particular genetic markers have been mentioned, but those markers have been different in different studies. Most recently HLA, human leukocyte antigen markers, have been implicated. Another study published in 1996 proposed that fibromyalgia is more common in people who have a family history of alcoholism and depression. Biological and genetic factors have been studied in these areas as well.

The 1996 study especially makes me crazy. It’s pretty well established that alcoholism “runs in families” just like fibro apparently does. Of course people with fibromyalgia are going to have higher instances of depression - and I’m not surprised to see higher levels of addictive behavior in those patients, either. Chronic pain hurts, and it’s laughable that researchers still tend to place the fibro after the depression or addictive behavior in the causal equation. To me, it seems pretty obvious that any kind of chronic pain that goes untreated or undertreated would lead to depression. As one fibro patient said to her doctor, “Here, let me jump on your chest for five years and see if YOU don’t feel depressed after awhile!”