Researchers have determined that fibromyalgia prevalence is 2.1% of the general population in Germany. Results appearing in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), suggest that fibromyalgia is a spectrum disorder rather than a categorical illness. Additionally, a number of fibromyalgia cases in the general population satisfy proposed criteria for physical symptom disorder-the presence of one or more physical symptoms that impair function, which cannot be explained by another clinical or psychiatric illness.
Fibromyalgia is a chronic, musculoskeletal syndrome characterized by chronic widespread pain together with fatigue, sleep disturbances, cognitive problems, and multiple somatic symptoms. In 2010 the ACR released modified diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia, eliminating the tender point count assessment that was part of the 1990 criteria. Shortly after the modified criteria was published it was decided that the widespread pain index and symptom severity score could be combined to form a new measurement of pain and symptom severity termed the polysymptomatic distress scale (PSD).
The lead author of the current study, Dr. Frederick Wolfe with the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases and University of Kansas School of Medicine in Wichita, reported on 2,445 subjects who were randomly selected from the general German population in 2012. The team used the 2010 modified ACR preliminary diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia to identify patients with the disease.