Is Fibromyalgia an auto-immune disease?
Fibromyalgia is not an auto-immune disease. Auto immune means that the body destroys itself. Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is autoimmune –the body actually attacks its own thyroid as if it were foreign tissue and destroys the gland. ( “Auto” means self as in the word autonomy.) Antibodies made by our own body destroy parts of it in this kind of illness. In fibromyalgia there is no tissue destruction. It’s one of the hallmarks of FM, actually. No changes are seen on Xray, MRIs, on blood tests, or in biopsies. If you see destruction–you know immediately that the cause is from some other condition. The immune system in FMS is somewhat underactive. This should not be a huge shock to us fibromyalgics since our mind and our muscles and our stomachs and our fingernails and hair don’t work very well either. Our immune systems are probably too tired to attack us! There doesn’t appear to be any more of a connection between the immune system and FMS than this general one.
