Myotonic dystrophy patients 'wrongly diagnosed with fibromyalgia'

More than three per cent of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia actually have a muscle-wasting disease called myotonic dystrophy type 2, a study in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism has revealed.

Myotonic dystrophy is a chronic, slowly-progressing muscular disease that can manifest at any age. Its characteristics include the wasting of muscles, difficulty relaxing a muscle, opacity of the lenses of the eyes and endocrine changes.

Researchers from the Jyvaskyla Central Hospital, the University of Tampere in Finland and the University of Texas noted that several of their myotonic dystrophy type 2 patients had previously been diagnosed with fibromyalgia.

After this observation, they randomly selected 90 patients who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia to undergo genetic testing for myotonic dystrophy type 2.

Of the 63 people who agreed to participate, two tested positive for the genetic mutation.

"We therefore suggest that the presence of [myotonic dystrophy type 2] should be investigated in a large sample of subjects diagnosed as having [fibromyalgia], and clinicians should be aware of overlap in the clinical presentation of these two distinct disorders," the study authors concluded.

A spokeswoman for the Arthritis Research Campaign said the study was of great interest, as fibromyalgia and chronic widespread pain were still very poorly understood.

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