I hear it all the time -- from health-care workers, supposed experts, and people with fibromyalgia: Fibromyalgia is an autoimmune disease. It seems logical because our symptoms are so similar to many autoimmune diseases, and because we tend to be prone to autoimmunity. Based on current evidence, however, it's a myth that fibromyalgia is autoimmune.

What We Know

While we've only uncovered the tip of the iceberg with fibromyalgia, and not much more with autoimmunity in general, we know certain things about both of them:

• Autoimmunity is detectable in the blood. Fibromyalgia is not. Autoimmune antibodies are what causes the problem in autoimmune diseases. So far, none have been discovered in fibromyalgia.
• Autoimmunity is linked to inflammation. Fibromyalgia is not. Most of us with fibromyalgia have some inflammation, but it's usually from an overlapping condition. The puffy hands, feet and eyes we frequently get are not true inflammation. Inflammatory markers show up on blood tests, and fibromites without overlapping inflammatory conditions test negative for them. Some studies have found anti-inflammatory markers.
• Autoimmunity is characterized by degeneration. Fibromyalgia is not. Autoimmune antibodies attack specific bodily tissues and destroy them as if they were a foreign virus or bacteria. Researchers have been unable to find any signs of degeneration in fibromyalgia, in spite of a lot of looking.

What We Don't Know

Does all this mean it's impossible for fibromyalgia to be autoimmune? No -- they just mean we have no evidence of it and shouldn't classify it that way. Just speculating here, but maybe there's an undiscovered autoimmune antibody that doesn't cause inflammation and is responsible for our accelerated loss of brain matter (which is currently considered premature aging of the brain.) However, because rheumatologists were the first ones to treat and research fibromyalgia, it's unlikely -- they specialize in autoimmune pain conditions. It was a natural place for them to look, and they repeatedly found nothing.

This myth probably became so pervasive because fibromyalgia was long described as "an arthritis-like condition," and most forms of arthritis are autoimmune. We have good evidence now that fibromyalgia isn't much like arthritis at all -- it involves the nervous system, the hormones, and the immune system to varying degrees, but the immune dysfunction is different from autoimmunity.

I'll be dubunking more myths soon -- if there are any you'd like to see, leave a comment about it!

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• What is Fibromyalgia?
• Types of Fibromyalgia Pain
• Understanding Fibro Fog

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