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 | Fibromyalgia
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Incorrect
Many
patients present for medical care reporting individual somatic
symptoms, such as back pain, headache, dizziness, and dyspnea.
However, others present with common functional syndromes manifested
by constellations of somatic symptoms, such as irritable bowel
syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia (FM), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS),
temporomandibular disorder (TMD), and the highly controversial
multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS).
The overlap
among functional syndromes in terms of symptoms, functional impairment,
psychiatric comorbidity, and response to generic treatments has
been recently summarized (Aaron
and Buchwald, 2001). In 53 studies that examined the co-occurrence
of 2 or more syndromes in patient groups, the co-occurrence rate
(overlap) was 35-70% for FM and CFS, 32-80% for FM and IBS, 58-92%
for CFS and IBS, 33-55% for FM and MCS, and 30-67% for CFS and
MCS.
The degree
of overlap is not surprising considering how these functional
syndromes are diagnosed which is predominantly or exclusively
on the basis of somatic symptoms. The prevalence of individual
symptoms such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, musculoskeletal
pains, headache, and gastrointestinal complaints is high across
all syndromes. Consequently, comorbidity with depressive and anxiety
symptoms and disorders is common (Gardner
et al., 2003).
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