Washington, Feb 22 (ANI): A regular dip in a warm swimming pool can alleviate pain in patients suffering from fibromyalgia, says a new study.

Fibromyalgia is a painful syndrome involving chronic and severe pain and tenderness in muscles, ligaments and tendons along with problems with sleep, anxiety and depression. More than 90 percent of females suffer from the disorder.

The team including Narcis Gusi of the Faculty of Sports Sciences, at the University of Extremadura, in Caceres, Spain and Pablo Tomas-Carus of the Department of Sport and Health at the University of Evora, Portugal, conducted a randomized trial on 33 female fibromyalgia patients.

Out of these 33, 17 were asked to take part in supervised training exercises in warm water for an hour three times a week over a period of 8 months while the remaining did no aquatic training.

The findings revealed that the long-term aquatic exercise program was effective in reducing the pain and improved the health-related quality of life of the participants.

“The addition of an aquatic exercise programme to the usual care for fibromyalgia in women is cost-effective in terms of both health care costs and societal costs. Appropriate aquatic exercise is a good health investment,” said the researchers.

The study appears in the open access journal Arthritis Research & Therapy. (ANI)