BACKGROUND: Fibromyalgia is a rheumatic syndrome characterized by widespread chronic musculoskeletal pain and specific palpable tender points. It is often associated with generalized fatigue, sleep disturbances, morning stiffness, dyspnea, anxiety and mood disturbances that may evolve into depression. Thus, such individuals' quality of life is negatively affected. However, the discriminating power of quality-of-life and depression assessment instruments is still unknown. OBJECTIVE: To assess depression and quality of life among patients with fibromyalgia, and the discriminating power of such instruments. METHOD: Quality of life was assessed by one specific instrument, the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), and another generic one, the Medical Outcomes Study 36-item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36). The Beck Depression Scale (BDS) was used to assess depression. Forty women participated: 20 with fibromyalgia (test group) and 20 healthy women (control group). The three protocols were applied to all individuals in both groups in a single evaluation session. All statistical analyses were performed using Student's t-test, with alpha = 0.05. RESULTS: Statistically significant differences between test and control groups were found via all questionnaires (p<0.05). The three questionnaires had good discriminatory power for differentiating between the two groups, but FIQ had the greatest and BDS least. CONCLUSION: Patients with fibromyalgia presented poor quality of life, compared with the control group. Comparing the three questionnaires, they were all efficient for both quality-of-life and depression assessments. However, since FIQ is a specific instrument, this gave the best discrimination between test and control groups, and this was shown through higher, statistically significant values.
fibromyalgia; depression; quality of life
