Similarities and differences between post-COVID-19 syndrome and fibromyalgia

ABSTRACT

It is estimated that 4% of people infected with COVID-19 will develop post-COVID-19 Syndrome (PC 19). PC 19 is defined as the presence of unexplained signs and symptoms developed during the illness and persistent beyond 12 weeks. Fibromyalgia (FM) is defined as generalized musculoskeletal pain of more than three months duration and is accompanied by other alterations such as fatigue and neurocognitive disorders. Clinically, both pathologies are similar, they share asthenia, myalgia, mental slowness, attention deficit, execution, and processing. The average age of incidence, the predominance in the female sex and the prevalence are similar in both groups. In PC 19 there is a clear relationship between the infection and the appearance of symptoms. In FM its etiology is unknown and various mechanisms are postulated as the cause, but among all of them, it is worth highlighting infections, mainly viral ones, as triggers of the symptom picture. At the present time, we do not know how the symptoms occur in both diseases, so we have no treatment, except symptomatic. So far we have seen the similarities, but there are also differences. In PC 19, only a third of the patients have generalized pain, a fact that is present in 100% of patients with FM and that defines the disease This leads us to conclude that although both coincide in many aspects, they are not the same clinical picture, but given its characteristics, it seems logical to include it in the group of central sensitization diseases. (DOLOR. 2022;3791-5) Copyright © 2022 Publicaciones Permanyer. All rights reserved.