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People with small-fiber neuropathy sometimes get faulty signals from the tiny nerves spread all over the body. This causes an odd constellation of symptoms overlapping with symptoms of fibromyalgia, a new study found.

Around 1 to 5 per cent of Americans are currently suffering from fibromyalgia in which majority is of women. Scientists had no idea about the cause that resulted in such severe and mysterious pain.

“What’s happened is in 2013 there’s been this absolute explosion of papers,” says neurologist Anne Louise Oaklander at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, according to DFP. “The whole view on this has shifted.”

Doctors and other medical experts believed that it was patients’ agony that resulted in the emotional hysteria.

Two studies published by Oaklander showed that more than half of the cases of fibromyalgia are less-known condition in which nerves are affected.

A team based at Albany Medical College, led by neuroscientist Frank Rice found similar reasons behind the cause of fibromyalgia. They discovered that there are excessive nerve fibers lining in the blood vessels of the skin of fibromyalgia patients. Like pervious studies, they too doubted of the physical presence of condition.

“Blood vessel nerve fibers are an important target that haven’t been in our line of thinking to date in chronic pain conditions,” said Rice in DFP, who is now president and chief scientist at Integrated Tissue Dynamics LLC, a biotechnology research company in Rensselaer, N.Y.

For treatment of fibromyalgia doctors prescribe drugs like antidepressants Cymbalta made by Eli Lilly and Savella by Forest Pharmaceuticals.

“We’re looking now to understand more about other features of the pathology that might lead to a more targeted approach and less of a shotgun that causes side effects,” added Rice.