1035 JOURNAL OF WOMEN’S HEALTH Volume 15, Number 9, 2006 © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. Women’s Health Issues with Fibromyalgia Syndrome JOAN L.F. SHAVER, Ph.D., R.N., JOELLEN WILBUR, Ph.D., A.P.N., F. PATRICK ROBINSON, Ph.D., R.N., EDWARD WANG, Ph.D., and MARY S. BUNTIN, M.S., M.P.H., R.N. ABSTRACT Background: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) involves multiple sensory, somatic, and cognitive symptoms that are bound to affect or be affected by physical and mental health status and behavioral components of daily life. Methods: From a telephone survey of 442 women with and 205 women without FMS as vol- unteers, data were compared on (1) general health status, (2) reproductive and sleep-related diagnoses, and (3) lifestyle health behaviors. Results: All multiple or logistics regression analyses for group differences were controlled for age, body mass index (BMI), race, employment status, marital status, having a college degree, low household income, and having ever been diagnosed with depression, with a Bonferroni p value correction for multiple indicators. Accordingly, FMS negatively impacted both perceived physi- cal and mental health status, although relatively more so for physical (p  0.017). Women with FMS were more likely to have had reproductive health or sleep-related diagnoses, including pre- menstrual syndrome, dysmenorrhea, breast cysts, bladder cystitis, sleep apnea, restless leg syn- drome, and abnormal leg movements (p  0.0125). They were calculated to use less than half as many calories per week as control women (689  1293 vs. 1499  1584 kcal/week, p  0.05) and had more sleep pattern difficulties (p  0.0125), more negative changes in sexual function (greater odds for 5 of 10 indicators at p  0.005), and lower alcohol use (odds ratio  0.39, p  0.05). Conclusions: Patients with FMS deserve careful assessment for reproductive conditions and sleep-related functional disorders. Besides more research into mechanisms underlying symp- toms, intervention testing specifically to alleviate sleep problems, low physical activity lev- els, and sexual dysfunction should be paramount. INTRODUCTION F IBROMYALGIA SYNDROME (FMS) is a condition with debilitating chronic, widespread muscu- loskeletal pain and stiffness in association with fatigue, sleep disturbances, and the presence of discrete tender points. 1 FMS affects about 2% of people in the population, and women account for the majority of cases by far. 2 The pain of FMS manifests as pain in response to stimuli not nor- mally painful (allodynia) and a reduced pain threshold (hyperalgesia). 3,4 Commonly associ- ated features are psychological distress and im- paired ability to think, remember, or concentrate. Explanatory investigations are largely related to central nervous system (CNS) aberrations that alter mood, cognition, and sleep but especially amplify pain perception. 5 FMS is profiled as a University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Nursing, Chicago, Illinois. This work was supported by the Ralph and Marion Falk Medical Trust, Chicago, Illinois.