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Sociodemographic characteristics, clinical signs and quality of life in patients with fibromyalgia.

OBJECTIVE
We aimed to evaluate the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics as well as the quality of life of patients with fibromyalgia (FM).


MATERIALS AND METHODS
A total of 37 female patients diagnosed with FM and 31 healthy females were included into the study. Individuals were asked about their demographic characteristics. The number of sensitive points (NSP), skin fold sensitivity, cutaneous hyperemia and reticular skin changes of patients and healthy controls were evaluated during physical examination. Individuals were evaluated for pain severity using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS), for psychological states using the Beck Depression Scale (BDS), for quality of life using the Short Form-36 (SF-36) and for functional status using the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ).


RESULTS
The mean age of FM patients was 39.2±6.5 years versus 39.1±6.2 years in the controls. The most frequently encountered FM symptoms were fatigue (94.6%), sleep disturbances (86.5%) and anxiety (86.5%). Differences between FM patients and controls were statistically significant for NSP (p=0.001), VAS (p=0.001), FIQ (p=0.001), BDS (p=0.001) and SF-36 (p=0.003), and FIQ subgroups were also different between the two groups (p<0.001). In the SF-36 survey, FM patients were different from the control in the physical function (p=0.001), pain (p=0.005), general health (p=0.017), physical fitness (p=0.003), and mental health (p=0.008) portions of the survey.


CONCLUSION
Fibromyalgia has distinct clinical features that lead to low functional capacity and quality of life. Thus, patients' sociodemographic characteristics and the evaluation of their quality of life may be important in the diagnosis and monitoring of treatment progress.