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Originally Posted by YouNeverKnow
I have PMR despite normal ESR and other blood tests. Have been dealing with it for two years.
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Unfortunately, I can't teach rheumatology 101 in a paragraph. Suffice it to say there is a great deal of overlap in both the symptom complexes and lab evaluation of the rheumatologic diseases, so much so that there is even an entity called "overlap syndrome" The only significant difference between PMR and fibromyalgia is the typically elevated ESR in the former and younger age of onset in the latter, but of course there are exceptions. A lot of physicians don't even believe in fibromyalgia as a legitimate disease since there is no definitive lab marker for it, so everything becomes PMR with a normal sed rate, especially in the over 55 crowd. So, you're both right and wrong at the same time. What we really need is a definitive lab marker for fibromyalgia, which would help distinguish the two apart, but even then there would be exceptions