The prevalence of fibromyalgia in Japanese workers

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the point prevalence of fibromyalgia (FM) among hospital workers and to make a list of the reported FM prevalence using the classification criteria of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) for FM.

Methods: Three hundred and forty‐three females and 196 males were surveyed using the 1990 ACR classification criteria of FM. The subjects were staff workers and non‐staff workers (such as floor sweepers and personnel of pharmaceutical companies) who worked in medical institutions.

Results: One hundred and six of the 343 females (30.9%) and 34 of the 196 males (17.3%) had complained of widespread pain for at least 3 months. All subjects who had complained of widespread pain for at least 3 months were examined by one experienced physician. Seven of the 343 females (2.04%) and one of the 196 males (0.51%) met the ACR criteria for FM. All of these eight subjects had seen a physician after the occurrence of widespread pain. Four of the eight subjects with FM had seen a physician in the past year. Only one subject had been diagnosed with FM before this study.

Conclusion: The advantage of this study was the extremely low dropout rate. FM is a common musculoskeletal disorder among Japanese adult workers, especially among female workers.