Can Fibromyalgia Be Hereditary?
Fibromyalgia is a complex disease that is still difficult for scientists to explain. It is a disorder that produces muscle and bone pain without a stimulus that causes it directly.
That is, fibromyalgia is that something normally non-painful produces an intense sensation of pain. The word itself comes from Greek and Latin, where ‘fibro’ refers to the fibers of the connective tissue, ‘mine’ to muscle and ‘algia’, which means pain.
It is a much more frequent pathology in women than in men. It is estimated that it affects around 2% of the world’s population, and it is still a complicated disorder to diagnose and treat.
Advances in current medicine have allowed us to begin to hypothesize about possible causes of fibromyalgia. Therefore, in this article we explain why it can be a hereditary disease and what other situations could cause it.
What is fibromyalgia?
As we have already mentioned, fibromyalgia is a complex disorder. This is so because the causes that cause it are not yet well known and it is very subjective, since what is altered is the person’s perception of pain.
Someone with fibromyalgia experiences musculoskeletal pain without an injury to explain it. Therefore, it is important to distinguish it from any joint injury or the bones and muscles themselves, since the symptoms will be similar.
In addition, this disease is usually associated with diverse and heterogeneous symptoms. First of all, it is very common for the person suffering from it to experience fatigue and stiffness throughout the body. Similarly, it is common to feel tingling in the hands or feet and even a feeling of inflammation.
The idea is that fibromyalgia subjects the person to a very intense sensation of pain that ends up affecting almost the entire life of the sufferer. In fact, these people often suffer from depression, anxiety, or other psychiatric disorders.
Pain greatly hinders attention or the ability to relate, so it also affects social and work aspects. On the other hand, it can be associated with many other symptoms, such as migraines or irritable bowel syndrome.
What causes can fibromyalgia have?
Scientists continue to try to find out what the causes of this pathology are. It is believed that what happens is that the concentration of certain substances that cause the sensation of pain increases in the brain.
In addition, it appears that the receptors of these substances are sensitized. This means that, to each new pain signal, the receptors carry out an exaggerated response, making the perception of that pain almost unbearable.
Different factors that may influence the development of this disease have been considered. For example, it seems that certain infections could trigger it. Similarly, some studies link the onset of fibromyalgia with trauma or stressful situations.
However, the latest research indicates that it may be a hereditary disease. Scientists have found that, in certain families with fibromyalgia, there were mutations in the DNA of the mitochondria.
Mitochondria are a part of cells that also contain DNA, but different from the nucleus. This DNA is always transmitted from mother to child. That is, the father’s genes do not influence the inheritance of this cell organ.
This assumption that fibromyalgia is hereditary would explain why it tends to affect women more, and also why there are often different cases within the same family.
Fibromyalgia treatment
Fibromyalgia has no curative treatment. Currently, symptoms can only be treated to try to reduce pain and the impact it has on the patient’s life. Therefore, psychological and social support for these people is very important.
However, the fact that everything points to a genetic mechanism allows us to believe that there will soon be a treatment that allows to act directly on the cause in order to avoid the disease.
In conclusion
Fibromyalgia is a very disabling disease. It has not yet been scientifically confirmed what is its cause or its mechanism. However, it seems that the origin is a genetic mutation and that, therefore, it is a hereditary pathology.
