Weather has tiny impact on fibromyalgia symptoms

 People with fibromyalgia may not find that weather has an impact on their symptoms, says a study reported in Arthritis Care & Research.

A total of 333 women who had fibromyalgia for around two years and were aged on average47 years old were surveyed about their fatigue and pain symptoms for 28 days. Responses were linked to air temperature, amount of sunshine and precipitation, atmospheric pressure and relative humidity.

Analysis of the data suggested that weather variables had a small effect on pain or fatigue symptoms in 10% of cases.

The findings were extremely small, suggesting that they “provide more evidence against, than in support of, the daily influence of weather on fibromyalgia pain and fatigue” says Dr Ercolie Bossema who led the study.

“This study is the first to investigate the impact of weather on fibromyalgia symptoms in a large cohort, and our findings show no association between specific fibromyalgia patient characteristics and weather sensitivity.”

Despite this research, many people with fibromyalgia do report that certain weather conditions make their symptoms worse.

Dr Bossema now plans to look at personality traits, beliefs about chronic pain and attitudes towards the influence of weather on symptoms “to help explain individual differences in weather sensitivity and its impact on fibromyalgia pain and fatigue”.