A blood test for Fibromyalgia is offered as a service by a company called EpicGenetics, Inc. in the USA.
It is important to note that this has only just been passed onto me and I need to start doing some checks to verify the claims.
The test Fibromyalgia test the company offers is called “FM/a®” and they claim it is the first test available that can diagnose Fibromyalgia. The results are available in a week or less from their laboratory, so they claim, and a simple blood test is all that is required. The company offer the test for $744 USD and also state this could be fully or partially covered by some medical insurance providers to people within the USA. It is unclear at this point in time if this service can be offered globally but I hope to bring you this news along with some background and clinical opinions by UK specialists
The company state that fibromyalgia is a real medical condition and that the test is a multi-biomarker-based test which concerns immune system white blood chemokine and cytokine patterns. They say that Patients with Fibromyalgia have a significantly dysregulated pattern when it comes to these proteins.
Test results are based upon a 1-100 scoring system, with fibromyalgia patients having scores of 50 and above. They claim their test is more than 93% “sensitive” and state this sensitivity is comparable to the blood test for HIV. They also claim that the blood test for rheumatoid arthritis is only 65% “sensitive” for comparison purposes.
This news could be very important to those with Fibromyalgia, their family, their friends and indeed the medical profession. Anyone that has been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia for some time will be able to tell you that it is often not taken seriously by doctors and some dismiss the condition to be psychological and even that it is just a new condition for the hypochondriac to claim they have. However this has been disputed by nearly everyone diagnosed with the condition and there are even examples of doctors with Fibromyalgia and quite a few of them are published on the matter. Whatever this test proves to be I hope to bring you news and opinion as the story develops. With that in mind please email us at development @myfibromyalgia.co.uk if you have any information or would like to contribute to this story, just take the space out before the @ sign as it helps keep spam to a minimum.
Last but not least here is the link for the FM/a® Test
April 14th, 2013 on 12:06
Take a look at the blog Fibromyalgia Perplex, Junk Science-Junk Ethics, by Professor Fred Wolfe. He has carefully evaluated the “test” and was scathing in his assessment. As a fellow rheumatologist, I am in full agreement with him. Caveat emptor!
April 25th, 2013 on 09:19
Thanks for the comment John. After posting I found the blog post as well and have written another post which I think you will find interesting.