[Up and down--the experience of women with the rheumatic illness fibromyalgia].

Chronic pain, like that inflicted by fibromyalgia, is not much known, unpredictable and can emerge everywhere in the body. Yet 2 to 4% of the population suffer from this disease, of which 73 to 88% are women. In fact fibromyalgia is more wide spread than the more known rheumatoid arthritis.