Resources on Fibromyalgia:

A Web Guide

of Organizations and Government Sites

 

For those who have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and are looking for information.
 
The intent of this page is to provide information that will help you to better communicate with your health care provider.  The author takes no responsibility for the content of the links.   
All sites are clickable links.
An excellent place to begin is the National Library of Medicine.  It is the world's largest medical library. It indexes articles in 3400 journals and makes those abstracts available on their database MEDLINE via the World Wide Web. MEDLINE has more than 10 million journal article references and abstracts going back to the early sixties.

Within the MEDLINE database is a special section, titled MEDLINEplus, geared towards the consumer and offers a plethora of information on fibromyalgia with links to many other sites.

You can find it by clicking on health topics or clicking this link MEDLINEplus health information .  From MEDLINEplus it is also possible to find out what clinical trials are currently being sponsored or you can click on this link Clinical Trials.  Enter the word fibromyalgia in the search box.

 The Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health is a leading medical research
facility.  Information about studies being conducted on fibromyalgia that are recruiting patients can be found by clicking on the link.

CRISP  (Computer Retrieval of Information Scientific Projects) is a database showing federally funded research projects currently being conducted or recently conducted at universities, hospitals, and other research facilities.
It has a "current awards query box" and "historical awards query box" that can be searched.  An amazing combination of 86 hits occurred when this author searched using the term fibromyalgia.

If you are interested in seeing what books the National Library of Medicine holds in it's collection about fibromyalgia you can click on LOCATORplus.

 DIRLINE (Directory of Information Resources Online) is the National Library of Medicine's online database containing location and descriptive information about a wide variety of information resources including organizations, research resources, projects, and databases concerned with health and biomedicine. By clicking on the link and then typing the term fibromyalgia you will find some organizations dealing with this disorder.

To find a library that can help you click on this link. You must remember that it is determined by the lending library whether they will choose to lend you articles or not.  Be sure to ask about their charges ahead of time because this can be very costly.

 The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS)  is a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  It performs research on the causes, treatment, and prevention of arthritis and other musculoskeletal disorders. This site provides some interesting information on the funding of research projects and current research where participants are being sought.

National Clearinghouse Guidelines will provided information on published guidelines on the handling and treatment of fibromyalgia for physicians.

Healthfinder.gov provides a nice list of resources on the web and also a listing of organizations offering support.

NIOSH or the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health offers some interesting sources written from the employer's point of view.  These may be well worth examining for those of you whose symptoms are related to your work.

The FDA or Federal Food and Drug Administration can offer you information about the medicines which your physician may be prescribing. It will be necessary for you to search the site with the drug name under human drugs.

Orphan drugs are drugs that are not commonly marketed by drug companies.  Although this author knows of none used in the treatment of fibromyalgia is link is provided if the need should arise.

The National Center for Women's Health Information provided information on access to health care for those women with disabilities. An important source since many more women suffer from this disorder.

The Center for Disease Control also has information about the prevalence and public health concerns about many diseases and disorders including fibromyalgia.  You must enter fibromyalgia in the search box to retrieve information from the CDC site.

Department of Health and Human Services also offers information on fibromyalgia.  You must select fibromyalgia from the pull down menu.

The Federal Consumer Information Center also offers publications on coping with fibromyalgia.

The National Health Information Center (NHIC) is a health information referral service. By clicking on this link and
searching under health information resource database you will retrieve organizations that will provide answers and information on fibromyalgia.

 Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the federal agency that administers Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), may prove to be a useful site if there is a possiblity that you may be diagnosed as disabled and unable to work due to your fibromyalgia.

Organizations on the Web