I believe fibromyalgia is the early phase of a complex disease leading to osteoarthritis. Damage to cartilage and arthritic spurs do not appear overnight. Years of pain and often, joint swelling occur before discernible X-ray changes. A familial, inherited pattern is obvious. A meticulous history reveals that the disease often begins at an earlier age than first suspected.
Symptoms often ease during the eventual growth spurt only to recur later.
Many fibromyalgics suffer primarily fatigue, emotional and cognitive defects and complain less of pain and other symptoms. It is progressively recognized as merely a facet of the same disease with symptoms predominantly at one end of a spectrum. Over thirty-seven years ago, a patient taking gout medication found he could easily break tartar off his teeth with his fingernail. It seemed probable a serum derived abnormality existed in saliva that allowed such deposition. Though well dispersed in solution.