Health rising blog post by Cort Johnson, 5 June: Is Fibromyalgia a danger to Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS)?
Extract:
Sharing similar symptoms with a much larger disease could be problematic if the two diseases are not precisely differentiated. Not only is fibromyalgia much more prevalent than ME/CFS (10 million people vs 1 million in the U.S), but the FDA approved drugs for it and the commercials featuring those drugs means that virtually everyone has heard of fibromyalgia.
Because doctors are much more familiar with FM than ME/CFS they are more likely, if given the chance, to diagnose a patient with FM. The ACR 2010 criteria gives doctors that chance.
The broad diagnostic criteria for FM could, conceivably, create a long term challenge to the viability of ME/CFS. If ME/CFS patients keep getting thrown into the FM basket the support for the ME/CFS community could weaken over time.)
In fact, Natelson believes that the less restrictive diagnostic criteria for FM (which has no exclusionary conditions) may be partly responsible for the greatly increased prevalence of FM relative to ME/CFS.
