Once or twice in the history of medical science, you’d encounter a situation where the drug used to treat a condition has been approved, but the debate on whether or not said condition actually exists is still in debate. For the most part, situations like this emerge for problems involving mental health – take attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) for example. There are more than a few ADHD medications on the market, but if you look around, you can still find people debating whether or not this developmental disorder is even real. You don’t, however, see this condition crop up too often when it comes to physical conditions. After all, the signs can be observed and are tangible to a degree, so there’s always some evidence of a condition. However, once in a while, strange things happen. Take, for example, the case of fibromyalgia.
Chronic, widespread pain of unknown origin is considered the primary hallmark of fibromyalgia. It is known to affect middle-aged women in most cases, though instances when the patient is younger or older are not unheard of. Patients with the condition have not responded to traditional methods for fighting pain, such as aspirin or other pain killing medications. Since the nerves themselves seem unresponsive to pharmaceutical stimulation, research teams have instead attempted to focus on affecting how the brain perceives and processes pain impulses. The recently approved drug for treating this pain-related condition, Lyrica, is supposed to affect the brain in just the right manner to relieve pain related to fibromyalgia. Normally, this would not be of much interest outside of people who have the condition and the people and groups that treat the problem. However, the fact that there are still quite a sizable number of people debating the very existence of the condition has stirred up some controversy.
Advocates that believe the condition is real contend that an estimated 10 million people in America alone can have the condition. However, the ones that refuse to recognize the condition – including the doctor who defined the condition a decade ago, and has since changed his mind – believe that diagnosing someone with fibromyalgia is not a good idea. Some doctors believe that it makes patients believe that they are feeling pain because of a condition that isn’t there, rather than bearing with the pain like other people do. There is no known physical cause for the condition, just as there is no data on why normal pain medications don’t work on it. There are also warnings on the potential side effects of Lyrica, which are quite real, even if the reality of the condition it is supposed to treat can be considered debatable. These effects include weight gain, edema, and long-term bouts of extreme dizziness.
Despite the controversy, several groups have already come to recognize the condition as being very real, and very disconcerting. Chief among them would be the Food and Drug Administration, which gave Lyrica approval to be marketed as a treatment for the condition. The American College of Rheumatology has officially recognized the condition as being real, along with Pfizer, Eli Lilly, Forest Laboratories, and a host of other pharmaceutical companies.
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