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(HealthDay News) — Most adolescent patients with juvenile-onset fibromyalgia (JFM) have continued fibromyalgia symptoms into young adulthood, according to a study published online February 24 in Pediatrics.
Susmita Kashikar-Zuck, PhD, from the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, and colleagues investigated the long-term outcomes of adolescents with JFM into early adulthood. Ninety-four patients with JFM and 33 age- and gender-matched healthy controls completed online demographic characteristics, pain, physical functioning, mood symptoms, and health care utilization assessments at about six years of follow-up.
The researchers found that, compared with healthy controls, patients with JFM had significantly higher pain, poorer physical function, greater anxiety and depressive symptoms, and a greater number of medical visits (all P< 0.001). Fibromyalgia symptoms continued into early adulthood for most JFM patients (>80%), with about half (51.1%) meeting the American College of Rheumatology criteria for adult fibromyalgia. Compared with controls, JFM patients were more likely to be married and less likely to have a college education.
“JFM is likely to be a long-term condition for many patients, and this study for the first time describes the wide-ranging impact of JFM on a variety of physical and psychosocial outcomes that seem to diverge from their same-age peers,” the authors write.
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