Background/Purpose: Flare-ups are a frequent and painful part of FMS and RA. We compared FMS and RA patients with respect to stresses that the patients belive may have caused their diseases to flare.

Methods: 211 office patients with FMS or RA (150 FMS:130 women and 20 men; mean age 51±12, 61 RA:45 women and 16 men; mean age 55±15) completed a questionnaire as to whether the following conditions cause their disease to flare: lack of sleep, fatigue, emotional stress, physical stress, depression, anxiety, traumatic events, overdoing it, being overworked, feeling overwhelmed, illness, personal changes, and confrontations with friends or family members. The chi-square test of association was done to compare FMS and RA patients with respect to their responses, using a 0.05 significance level.

Results: For most of the conditions, FMS patients were significantly more likely than RA patients to report that a stress caused their disease to flare, including emotional stress (58% vs. 43%, p= 0.042), physical stress (54% vs. 34%, p= 0.010), lack of sleep (53% vs. 33%, p= 0.007), illness (39% vs. 12%, p < 0.001, anxiety (31% vs. 16%, p= 0.027),depression (25% vs. 10%, p = 0.012), and traumatic events (25% vs. 12%, p = 0.026).

Conclusion: FMS patients were significantly more likely than RA patients to identify specific stresses as a cause of disease flare-ups, such as emotional and physical stress. Fibromyalgia patients are more somatically sensitive and more often recognize stresses that aggrevate their symptoms. Stress reduction strategies might help fibromyalgia patients.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/fibromyalgia-patients-identify-more-causes-of-disease-flare-ups-than-ra-patients/