Explore effective treatments for Fibromyalgia, including medication, therapy, lifestyle changes, and holistic approaches to manage symptoms.
New data compares what happens when the dosage of DMARDs such as methotrexate is tapered or kept steady. For most rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, sustained remission (inactive disease) is the goal of taking methotrexate or biologic DMARDS to manage their disease. However, what to do after reaching that goal hasn’t been clear. Should RA patients stick with the medication dose that’s working or gradually taper the dose — and thus lessen both the expense of…
Knowing there could be a lag between objective measures of improvement and patient–reported outcomes could help prevent over-treatment. When a rheumatologist measures disease activity in a patient with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), objective clinical measures like C-reactive protein levels in the blood and swollen joint count are essential to factor in, but so are patient-reported measures including pain and fatigue. While both are certainly important, there may be some benefit to evaluating clinical factors and patient-reported…
Although biologics cross the placenta, research shows they lead to few infections in babies after they’re born. The prospect of pregnancy can be daunting for women with inflammatory arthritis. Not only can disease flares occur, but a host of medications — including the commonly prescribed methotrexate — are off-limits because of concerns about birth defects and complications. There’s also a worrisome information gap on the effects of many medications during pregnancy, since pregnant women are…
Surprisingly, stronger opioids were the worst at relieving pain in a new multi-study analysis. Despite concerns about safety and addiction, lots of people with osteoarthritis (OA) take opioids to address their chronic pain. A recent study in Sweden, for example, revealed that one in four patients with OA had been prescribed an opioid in the previous year — despite the fact that the drugs aren’t on the list of recommended treatments except in extreme circumstances…
Female patients were much more likely to have a dual diagnosis. Small studies have suggested an overlap between spondyloarthritis (SpA) and fibromyalgia, but now a larger meta-analysis confirms it: About 17 percent of SpA patients also have fibromyalgia, compared to 2 to 8 percent of the general population that has fibromyalgia. Click Here to Visit the Store and find Much More…. These findings, which were based on an analysis of 15 earlier observational trials, were…
‘Art enables me to face my body and my life with courage.’ Chronic 24/7 pain, fatigue, swelling, and a host of other symptoms are all part of my journey with rheumatoid arthritis, axial spondyloarthritis, osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions I’ve been living with for years. I’ve loved drawing since I was a child, and after my RA diagnosis in 2011, I started to create art more regularly. As my diseases progressed and multiplied, my…
No matter who you talk to in the chronic pain, arthritis, and musculoskeletal disease community — patients, clinicians, researchers, public health experts — medical marijuana is controversial. Is it safe? Is it effective for treating pain and inflammation? Should it be legal? While more clinical trials are sorely needed to understand the benefits and side effects of using medical marijuana to treat conditions like arthritis, it’s important to understand how patients think about and use…
Methotrexate (MTX) is considered a “first-line” therapy for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and is also used to treat psoriatic arthritis (PsA). But despite the well-known benefits of helping to reduce symptoms and prevent disease progression, methotrexate has a very mixed reputation among arthritis patients. Perhaps because MTX is so commonly prescribed, many inflammatory arthritis patients start to worry about whether or not they’ll have to take it almost as soon as they’re diagnosed. “For anyone with…
One of the main reasons people with arthritis visit the rheumatologist frequently — every three months is common among patients with inflammatory arthritis — is for doctors and patients to assess how arthritis patients are managing their disease. Typical check-ins may include a doctor’s physical exam and assessment as well as reviewing the results of blood tests and imaging tests. What’s also critical at these visits is something arthritis researchers and doctors call PROs, or…
Fibromyalgia and lupus are both chronic diseases with no cure, can both cause some similar symptoms, and can both take a long time to get the right diagnosis. But fibromyalgia — often called fibro — and lupus are two very distinct health conditions with very different causes and treatments, despite having some features in common. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder that involves widespread inflammation and impacts many organs throughout the body. Fibromyalgia a disorder that…