Fibromyalgia Prevalence & Characteristics Save

PLOS has reported the results of the 2012 US National Health Interview Survey that focuses on fibromyalgia. The NHIS incorporated characteristics drawn from the 2010 American College of Rheumatology preliminary fibromyalgia criteria to identify the prevalence of FM from a national survey of 8446 persons that are representative of 225.7 million US adults.

This survey identified FM in 1.75% of the population, or 3.94 million persons. Surprisingly, 73% of identified cases reported a physician’s diagnosis other than fibromyalgia. Identified cases had high levels of self-reported pain, non-pain symptoms, comorbidity, psychological distress, medical costs, Social Security and work disability. FM patients were more likely to have multiple comorbidities and be 8-11 times more likely to be on disability or out of work. They were 2 times more likely to have been hospitalized, seeing a specialist or declared problems paying their medical bills. Common features included anxiety, memory loss, insomnia, fatigue and pain. 

In the US, 1.75% of the population has self-identified, criteria-based fibromyalgia, often with severe symptoms, but most (73%) have not received a clinical diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia symptoms, as measured by the polysymptomatic distress (PSD) scale, were continuous, and that there was no clearly defined cut-point that separated fibromyalgia from non-fibromyalgia. While PSD scales are very high in FM, high PSD is not FM alone.