Body system: Musculoskeletal SystemRegulation: 38 CFR § 4.71aDBQ: DBQ NEURO Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is a chronic condition that causes widespread muscle pain, stiffness, and tender points throughout your body, often accompanied by fatigue and sleep problems. The VA rates fibromyalgia at 10%, 20%, or 40% based on how often your symptoms occur and how well they respond to treatment. A 10% rating means you need daily medication to control symptoms, 20% means symptoms come and go but are present more than one-third of the time, and 40% means you have constant or nearly constant symptoms that don't respond well to treatment.
Rating levels
- 40% — Your fibromyalgia symptoms must be present almost all the time and don't get better even with medical treatment. The pain, fatigue, and other symptoms are essentially constant (refractory means they don't respond to or improve with therapy, medications, or other treatments your doctor has tried).
- 20% — Your fibromyalgia symptoms come and go in episodes (flare-ups), and these flare-ups are often triggered by things like stress, weather changes, or doing too much physical activity. However, you experience these painful episodes more than one-third of the time - meaning if you track your symptoms over several months, you're having fibromyalgia pain and other symptoms for more days than you're symptom-free.
- 10% — You need to take medication every day without breaks to manage your fibromyalgia symptoms. This includes prescription pain relievers, muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatory drugs, or other medications that your doctor has prescribed specifically to control the widespread pain, stiffness, and other effects of fibromyalgia. The key requirement is that you cannot go without this medication - you must take it continuously to keep your condition under control.