Clinical study of chronic pain in hereditary myopathies

In the field of neuromuscular diseases, pain and its management remain imperfectly understood and described. We study 68 unselected, consecutive adult patients attending a multidisciplinary consultation for hereditary myopathy. Forty-six (67%) were suffering from chronic pain. Pain was assessed with self report questionnaire and a standardized clinical evaluation. Mean duration of the pain was 7.2+/-8.9 years, and multiple body sites were involved in 91% of cases. Usual pain intensity (Visual Analogue Scale 0-100) was moderate (39.5+/-26.2). For 42 patients (91%) the principal cause of the pain was of muscular origin, with frequent features of myofascial pain syndromes (MPS, 50%) and fibromyalgia (FMS, 26%). Pain was the major complaint for 6.3% of the patients. Pain management was essentially based on physiotherapy. Only a minority of patients (38%) has an appropriate drug treatment. Common analgesics appeared to be very effective in these patients.