Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain syndrome characterized by a wide array of symptoms, generally deep in the joints and muscles. It affects approximately 5 million Americans a year and is most prevalent in women. Though chronic pain has been around for over a century, the cause has long been a mystery. However, according to Sutherland (2014), “experts now suspect that fibromyalgia occurs when individuals with an inherited risk are exposed to a physiological trigger, whether from illness, injury, or a psychological crisis” (p. 56).
Recent research indicates that individuals with fibromyalgia have subtle differences in the area of the brain that processes pain, and that increased susceptibility to pain can be triggered by a traumatic event. Other research avenues have identified that such individuals may have damaged nerve endings. Consequently, drugs have been developed to target brain functioning in these areas; today, three drugs are now approved by the USFDA to target fibromyalgia. However, there is still much to be learned about this syndrome. Chronic pain patients are diverse in their presentation and etiology, and even these developments apply only to some chronic pain patients. But these emerging clues might point to the beginning of the end of the search for relief for millions of patients.