Answers

to questions you may have

Fibromyalgia is a chronic immune system disorder. It is characterized by abnormal patterns of specific proteins in the immune system’s white blood cells. Fibromyalgia affects people of all ages, genders and ethnicities. As many as 6% of Americans have fibromyalgia.

Patients suffer from a wide range of symptoms including chronic pain, constant fatigue, sleep disturbances, depression, thinking and memory problems (“brain fog”), anxiety, frequent headaches, numbness and tingling of the arms and legs, gastrointestinal upset and dysfunction, joint aches and leg cramps.

Historically, the wide range of symptoms and lack of a definitive diagnostic test have made it hard to identify the disease. Doctors needed to eliminate other possibilities before diagnosing fibromyalgia, which is a long and expensive process. Not surprisingly, an estimated three out of four people with fibromyalgia remain undiagnosed today. The FM/a® Test is changing all that.

The FM/a® Test is the first and currently the only definitive blood test to objectively diagnose fibromyalgia. It is the result of award-winning research and independent clinical studies performed at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Since 2012, the FM/a® fibromyalgia test has successfully diagnosed thousands of patients.

Patients with fibromyalgia have been shown to have an irregular pattern of chemokine and cytokine proteins in their immune system. The FM/a® fibromyalgia test analyzes these patterns in the immune system’s white blood cells. Test results are based on a 1-100 scoring system, with scores above 50 indicating a positive fibromyalgia diagnosis.

If you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms and your healthcare provider authorizes the blood test, you qualify. There is no age limitation. We now offer testing of patients from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Turkey, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. Download the doctor authorization form here.

Yes, it is covered by Medicare and most major insurance companies. We will contact your insurance company’s billing department to confirm your coverage before you have the test.

Yes. We do offer a no interest payment plan, which includes the test kit we will send to you, the blood draw, and the return of your blood sample to us. There are no other charges.

Start by completing the FM/a® Test Application Form.  It takes just a few minutes. Also download the healthcare provider authorization form and give it to your doctor to complete and return to us. If you need help to find a provider to order the test for you, please contact us at 310-268-1001. There is no cost or obligation.

Our medical staff will review your information and, upon approval, we will send you an FM/a® Test kit via FedEx. We will also arrange for your blood to be drawn at a Quest lab at a time and location convenient for you. If you prefer, a medical practitioner can come to your home instead. The procedure is simple and requires less than an ounce of blood. Your blood specimen will be overnighted to our CLIA-licensed and CAP-accredited laboratory in Los Angeles for analysis.

You’ll get an email to let you know that we’ve received your application. We’ll review your information and confirm your insurance coverage, which normally takes about 7 days. Following your blood draw, you can expect your results in about 10 days. Results will be mailed to you and to the doctor who ordered your test. (Due to HIPAA requirements, results cannot be emailed or faxed.)

After you apply online, you will receive a call from a lab professional to answer your questions and help you prepare for the test. For example, we’ll let you know if you should stop any medications before your blood draw.

There is still a lot we don’t know about fibromyalgia. By working together with our research partners at major universities and medical institutions, and with fibromyalgia patients, we’re making life-changing progress every day.

While medications can address some symptoms of fibromyalgia, there’s not yet a treatment for the disease itself. Now that the FM/a® Test can definitively diagnose fibromyalgia, hope is on the horizon. We’re actively investigating a treatment that could eliminate the symptoms of the disease. If your FM/a® Test result is positive, you can volunteer for one of our upcoming treatment trials ran by Dr. Bruce Gillis at Epic Genetics. The trial will investigate the use of a treatment that could completely eliminate the symptoms of the disease.

FM/a® Test patients have been shown to lack certain cytokines, which may mitigate the risk of a cytokine storm or possibly COVID itself. EpicGenetics, along with our partners at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, recently completed a study to determine if fibromyalgia patients may be less or more susceptible to the effects of a COVID-19 infection. The study was published in the Journal of Advances in Medicine and Medical Research in April of 2021. You can read the results by clicking here.

This is one of the questions we’re asked most often. We recently completed a study to determine if there’s a genetic component to this disease. Data analysis began in late 2020 and is expected to be submitted for review later in 2021.

Yes. EpicGenetics has a research collaboration with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. We are looking into potential links between fibromyalgia and chronic pain. This study began in 2021 and is expected to be completed later this year.

There is a study with Mayo Clinic looking at diagnostic time and cost. We will be documenting the ability of the FM/a® Test to expedite the diagnosis of fibromyalgia and to do so in a cost-effective manner.

We also have a study underway with Urology of Virginia, an affiliate of the University of Virginia on Interstitial Cystitis. The study is looking at whether there is a relationship between this painful bladder disease and fibromyalgia.

Research began on a genomics study at The University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago in 2017. The study is to determine if there are DNA-related pathways which explain why a person develops fibromyalgia.