Fibromyalgia – offering evidence based treatment

Introduction:Fibromyalgia (FM) is a clinical condition characterized by chronic widespread pain, fatigue, non refreshing sleep, mood disturbance and cognitive impairment with accompanying functional disability. It’s etiology and even it’s existence as a clinical entity have been discussed over the last decades. The lack of understanding of it’s physiopathology and the fact that, to this date, there is no strong effective treatment for it makes this discussion even more relevant for clinicians. We here try to revise some of the clinical relevant data available to this day.
Methods: This paper is a narrative revision which gathers information based on a PubMed database search from the last 6 years (2012-2018), in Portuguese or English, for clinical trials or reviews, on the term “Fibromyalgia treatment”.
Results and discussion: Although there isn’t a single strong intervention for FM patients, there is enough evidence suggesting that patient education on the symptoms, on the disease itself and on the realistic treatment goals can benefit these patients. Exercise is also evidence based and should be appropriately suggested. Classical and new Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) interventions should be seen as the corner stone of treatment in these patients, specially if having co-morbid affective disorders. Many drugs have been studied in the hopes of helping FM patients but few have evidence to support its recommendation.