Joint Hypermobility Syndrome Pain

Current Pain and Headache Reports 2009, 13:427-433 Current Medicine Group  LLC ISSN 1531-3433 Copyright © 2010 by Current Medicine Group LLC

Rodney Grahame, CBE, MD, FRCP

Corresponding author:
Rodney Grahame, CBE, MD, FRCP
Centre for Rheumatology, University College Hospital, 3rd Floor Central, 250 Euston Road, London, NW1 2PQ, United Kingdom.
Email: r.grahame@ucl.ac.uk

Joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS) was initially defined as the occurrence of musculoskeletal symptoms in the presence of joint laxity and hypermobility in otherwise healthy individuals.

It is now perceived as a commonly overlooked, underdiagnosed, multifaceted, and multisystemic heritable disorder of connective tissue (HDCT), which shares many of the phenotypic features of other HDCTs such as Marfan syndrome and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

Whereas the additional flexibility can confer benefits in terms of mobility and agility, adverse effects of tissue laxity and fragility can give rise to clinical consequences that resonate far beyond the confines of the musculoskeletal system. There is hardly a clinical specialty to be found that is not touched in one way or another by JHS.

Over the past decade, it has become evident that of all the complications that may arise in JHS, chronic pain is arguably the most menacing and difficult to treat.