Quality of Life Measures in Fibromyalgia

Abstract

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic, widespread and painful disorder of affecting approximately 2–3% of the general population, with an approximately 90% female preponder- ance. Health-related quality of life (HRQoL) outcome assessment is crucial in patients with FM because of their multiple symptoms, which include chronic pain, fatigue, weakness, hyperalgesia, secondary depression and allodynia. These can produce substantial work disability and disrup- tions in quality of life, with impaired social and family functioning. The diverse symptomatology of patients with FM may be assessed holistically using HRQoL questionnaires. These question- naires can be classified into generic measures and disease-specific measures. SF-36 and EQ-5D represent the generic tools most commonly used in FM studies, but other questionnaires include the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), Nottingham Health Profile (NHP), Health Utilities Index (HUI) and Quality of Well Being Index (QWB). The fibromyalgia-specific instruments most commonly used are the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ) and FibroFatigue Scale (FFS). To date, few cost-utility analyses exist. Examples include EQ-5D and SF-6D. Using these questionnaires it has been shown that patients with FM perform worse than other chronic pain patients, such as those with rheumatoid arthritis and chronic back pain, specifically when vitality, bodily pain, mental health, social functioning, mobility, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression scores were analyzed. The impact of illness, adjusted for co-morbidities, increased in younger adults but the symptomatology decreased with age.