Fibromyalgia

physical activity, depression and quality of life

Abstract

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a disease characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain that can be accompanied by several other symptoms not related to the musculoskeletal system and its predominance in Brazil is of 2,5%. Objective: Evaluate the performance in physical activity, symptoms of depression and life quality in patients with FM. Type of study: Retrospective observational study. Method: fifty adult patients that were diagnosed with FM according to the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) criteria. Patients who presented comorbidities were excluded of the study. After the project being approved by the research ethics committee, patients with fibromyalgia that attended a routine doctor’s visit in a private rheumatologic office and met the inclusion criteria were invited to take part in the study. The data analysis was done with the Kruskal–Wallis test, Mann-Whitney e coefficient and correlation Person test. Values of P< 0,05 were considered significant. Results: Female predominance, white ethnicity, average age of 47 (±13) years old, married, and with children. Physical activity (56% of participants), physical activity measured by IPAQ short version showed that 24% of participants presented low level, 42% moderate and 24% high. VAS varied score between 0 (n=9) and 8 (n=6). Significant statistic (p=0,44) was not observed when compared with VAS and IPAQ. The FIQ score varied between 0 and 86,7. The total BDI score varied between 0 and 26. The Affective-cognitive subscale (BDI-13) varied between 0 and 22. Statistic difference was not observed when compared with BDI total and BDI-13 with IPAQ. There was positive correlation of BDI-13 score with the total FIQ and the BDI13 with VAS score. Conclusion: Benefit of physical activity was not demonstrated in the symptoms of pain relief, neither life quality nor depression in patients with fibromyalgia. This result might be related to the inaccuracy of the IPAQ method used to quantify the intensity of physical activity self-reported by the patients.