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In May 2010, the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) released new criteria for the clinical diagnosis of Fibromyalgia (FM). These replace older criteria published in 1990. Using the older criteria, besides having widespread pain on both sides of the body for at least 3 months, a patient needed to have pain (not just ‘tenderness’) present in 11 out of 18 specific tender point sites in order to be diagnosed with FM.

The new criteria recommend that the tender point examination be replaced with a combination of a widespread pain index (WPI) and severity scale of symptoms (SS) as the revised standards for the diagnosis of FM.

Note: There is a new blood test for Fibromyalgia that is being developed by a private clinic. Independent validation of this test has shown mixed results so far.