Objective: To establish the effect of therapeutic dance and physical exercise on the symptomatology and number of painful points in women with fibromyalgia. Materials and methods: Quasi-experimental study that considered a randomized probabilistic sample. A total of 37 women with fibromyalgia underwent therapeutic dance (n=18) and physical exercise (n=19) programs. The average age was 47.4 ± 8.4 years. The length of the intervention was 3 months with a training frequency of 2 sessions per week and a duration of 60 minutes per session. All the participants provided information that allowed to determine the general pain index (GPI) and the scale of symptom severity (SSS). Results: Therapeutic dance and physical exercise significantly decreased the number of painful points (from 12.1 ± 2.8 to 7.3 ± 3.1 for pre-and post-values respectively (p = 0.000)) and the symptoms associated with fibromyalgia (8.7 ± 2.3 to 5.7 ± 2.6 for pre-and post-values respectively (p = 0.000)). Conclusions: Therapeutic dance and physical exercise have an equivalent beneficial effect on the reduction of the general pain index, depression, cognitive symptoms and sleep disorders in women with fibromyalgia.

Introduction: Fibromyalgia (FM) is a condition characterized by chronic widespread pain and generalized tenderness accompanied by fatigue, disturbed sleep and cognitive difficulties. Several types of muscle abnormalities have been reported in FM at tissue, cellular and subcellular level, which could eventually alter the passive electrical response of the muscle. Methods: We evaluated the brachial musculature of 41 women, 21 with FM and 20 without, using multi-frequency electrical impedance myography and the characteristic parameters of the Cole-Cole model were obtained (R 0, R∞, τ and α). Results: The alpha parameter of the FM group was statistically different (0.21 ± 0.05 against 0.17 ± 0.05 p = 0.008). Discussion: The higher values of alpha parameter in the FM group may suggest that the behaviour of the cell membrane in FM is more permeable to the ions than in the non FM group and, therefore, less resistive.

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