Until recently, doctors didn't believe fibromyalgia was a real disorder. Because the disease, characterized by chronic pain and hypersensitivity, is difficult to diagnose, a woman who experienced excruciating pain at the slightest touch, such as through wearing jewelry or sleeping under covers, may have been told her symptoms were "all in her head." But thanks to recent research and public awareness, the medical community is taking this once-mysterious disease more seriously.

We asked researcher Kim Dupree Jones, PhD., RN, FNP, assistant professor in the Schools of Nursing and Medicine at the Oregon Health and Sciences University, why fibromyalgia has a history of poor diagnosis and what kind of research is on the horizon.

Q: I've heard a doctor refer to fibromyalgia as "the garbage pail of rheumatology." Why are some doctors reluctant to recognize and diagnose this disease?

A: Unfortunately, I have heard that a lot before. But let's put it in perspective and look at when asthma was first being recognized. Thirty years ago, when someone had shortness of breath, they were told to go to a psychiatrist and calm down. No one treats asthma like that anymore. The problem is that we have a lot of information about what is wrong in fibromyalgia, but our treatments don't line up with the pathophysiology as well now as they will in five years. We need to develop better treatments. Once the treatments are available, the primary care providers will be more willing to treat it. Some rheumatologists are interested more in the autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. These diseases are treated with new and exciting chemotherapeutic agents. It hasn't been that many years since people with RA were told, "You just have to live to learn with your pain." Now, there are a lot of drugs for those diseases. However, there are still large groups of people who have problems like fibromyalgia and chronic low-back pain, which are not autoimmune in nature.