Why the study?
Do patients with primary fibromyalgia have elevated antibody titers to Epstein-Barr virus compared to controls?
Do patients with primary fibromyalgia have elevated antibody titers to Epstein-Barr virus compared to controls?
Despite frequent symptoms resembling chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection, patients with primary fibromyalgia do not have significantly different EBV antibody titers compared to controls.
No role for EBV testing in fibromyalgia; leaves open non-EBV etiologies for prospective study.
Fifty patients with primary fibromyalgia who had been followed in an academic rheumatology practice frequently reported symptoms thought to be typical of "chronic Epstein-Barr virus infection," but not of fibromyalgia: recurrent sore throat (54%), recurrent rash (47%), chronic cough (40%), recurrent adenopathy (33%), and recurrent low-grade fevers (28%). In 55% of the patients, illness had begun suddenly, with what seemed to be a viral syndrome. Antibody titers to Epstein-Barr virus in the patients with fibromyalgia, however, were not significantly different from those in age- and sex-matched "healthy" and "unhealthy" control subjects.
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Buchwald et al. (1987) studied this question.