The prevalence of fibromyalgia in Japanese workers

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.

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.

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.

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.