I studied Medicine at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and later I specialized in Rheumatology through the MIR system at the Hospital de la Princesa. I spent another year training as a Family Physician at the Hospital de La Paz.

After working as a rheumatologist in the public and private system, I decided to go to the United States to further my training as a researcher. I had the opportunity to develop my research at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles which then helped me to obtain a PhD in Medicine.

Back in Spain, I continued working at the Hospital Gregorio Marañón de Madrid for some years and later I moved to the Instituto Provincial de Rehabilitación (IPR) where I have been leading a specialized fibromyalgia clinic for some time.

Throughout these years, I have been a principal investigator in several projects funded by government agencies and private companies. I have attended national and international medical congresses to present my research in the form of conferences, papers or posters. To date, about 140 papers. I have also published more than 100 articles in numerous national and international scientific journals, as well as several book chapters. In the academic arena, I have organized several congresses, scientific meetings, and courses. I have also supervised some doctoral theses in Spanish Universities.

I also collaborate with several Patient Associations of which I am part of the scientific and advisory committee. With them I have developed an intense informative activity to expand the awareness of the disease and to support people with fibromyalgia.

My experience

Since I published my first paper on fibromyalgia in 1995, I have not stopped researching and treating patients with this disease. I have been studying fibromyalgia for about 25 years now.

I have been actively investigating the causes of the disease such as, for example, the role played by some viruses as triggers of the disease. I have also participated in genetic studies to determine the predisposition of some families to suffer from it.

Improving diagnosis and assessing the severity of the disease in certain patients remains one of the topics on which I have worked the most. I have validated several questionnaires to be used in our patients and I have contributed to the construction of a specific high-performance questionnaire to assess the severity of fibromyalgia.

In the field of treatment, I have participated in several international clinical trials with drugs, physical exercises, complementary therapies, different psychotherapy programs and in the development of an online psychotherapy program which obtained magnificent results.

Informing patients has always been one of my priorities, since a well-informed patient is more likely to face his or her disease successfully. As a consequence of this interest, we published a guide for people with fibromyalgia, which is the most visited in our country. This guide has also been translated into English and French.

I have also been concerned about the training of other doctors so that they can adequately treat their patients. The result of this has been the elaboration of the first consensus document on fibromyalgia from the Spanish Society of Rheumatology, of which I was director.

Finally, in the field of health management, I have investigated relevant aspects such as sick leave and incapacity for work or the use of economic resources in this disease so that the health authorities have sufficient data to be able to adequately manage health resources.

In short, after a whole professional life dedicated to the study and improvement of care for people with fibromyalgia, I humbly believe I know what I am talking about.