text: is fibromyalgia a genuine disease?   fibromyalgia is a "syndrome", not a disease. it is compromised of several co-conditions, one being that it is a neurotransmitter disorder. here are the results of a test done on fibromyalgia patients which proves that there is a problem.  fibromyalgia pain, isn't all in patients' heads new brain study finds.  june 7, 2002  fmri scans give first objective measure of mysterious ailment, provide road map for future study  ann arbor, mi - a new brain-scan study confirms scientifically what fibromyalgia patients have been telling a skeptical medical community for years: they're really in pain.  in fact, the study finds, people with fibromyalgia say they feel severe pain, and have measurable pain signals in their brains, from a gentle finger squeeze that barely feels unpleasant to people without the disease. the squeeze's force must be doubled to cause healthy people to feel the same level of pain - and their pain signals show up in different brain areas.  the results, published in the may issue of arthritis & rheumatism, the journal of the american college of rheumatology, may offer the proof of fibromyalgia's physical roots that many doubtful physicians have sought. it may also open doors for further research on the still-unknown causes of the disease, which affects more than 2 percent of americans, mainly women.  lead authors richard gracely, ph.d., and daniel clauw, m.d., did the study at georgetown university medical center and the national institutes of health, but are now continuing the work at the university of michigan health system. in an editorial in the same issue, clauw and u-m rheumatologist leslie crofford, m.d., stress the importance of fibromyalgia research and care.  to correlate subjective pain sensation with objective views of brain signals, the researchers used a super-fast form of mri brain imaging, called functional mri or fmri, on 16 fibromyalgia patients and 16 people without the disease. as a result, they say, the study offers the first objective method for corroborating what fibromyalgia patients report they feel, and what's going on in their brains at the precise moment they feel it. and, it gives researchers a road map of the areas of the brain that are most - and least - active when patients feel pain.  "the fmri technology gave us a unique opportunity to look at the neurobiology underlying tenderness, which is a hallmark of fibromyalgia," says clauw. "these results, combined with other work done by our group and others, have convinced us that some pathologic process is making these patients more sensitive. for some reason, still unknown, there's a neurobiological amplification of their pain signals."  further results from the study were presented last year at the acr annual meeting. the project will continue later this year at umhs, joining other fmri fibromyalgia research now under way.  for decades, patients and physicians have built a case that fibromyalgia is a specific, diagnosable chronic disease, characterized by tenderness and stiffness all over the body as well as fatigue, headaches, gastrointestinal problems and depression. many patients with the disease find it interferes with their work, family and personal life. statistics show that far more women than men are affected, and that it occurs mostly during the childbearing years.  the acr released classification criteria for fibromyalgia in 1990, to help doctors diagnose it and rule out other chronic pain conditions. clauw and crofford's editorial looks at the current state of research, and calls for rheumatologists to take the lead in fibromyalgia care and science.  but many skeptics have debated the very existence of fibromyalgia as a clearly distinct disorder, saying it seemed to be rooted more in psychological and social factors than in physical, biological causes. their argument has been bolstered by the failure of research to find a clear cause, an effe