This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.
Wide variation seen between ACR diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
The American College of Rheumatology 1990, 2010 and a modified version of the 2010 fibromyalgia diagnostic criteria yielded highly variable results in a group of Scottish study participants, according to recently published findings.
Researchers applied American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 1990, ACR 2010 and a modified version of the 2010 criteria to the same group of participants selected from a survey. Questionnaires were sent to the 1,604 respondents with questions about pain symptoms during the last 3 months, diagnoses of other rheumatic conditions and other questions based on the Widespread Pain Index (WPI) and the Symptom Severity Scale. Of those, 104 attended a research clinic and underwent physical examinations and answered questionnaires relevant to each diagnostic method.
Thirty-two of the participants met at least one set of criteria for fibromyalgia (FM); 11 met ACR 1990, seven met ACR 2010 and 27 met the modified ACR 2010 criteria. Only four participants met criteria in all three sets, and no patients met both the ACR 2010 and ACR 2010 modified criteria, according to the researchers.
Prevalence of FM among the respondents was 1.7% according to the ACR 1990 criteria, 1.2% with the ACR 2010 criteria and 5.4% using the modified 2010 criteria, or 3% when accounting for another condition that may cause pain.
Operationalizing the ACR 2010 and modified 2010 criteria was challenging, according to the researchers, and the challenges may result in different observers arriving at different conclusions, perhaps in the same patient. – by Shirley Pulawski
Disclosure: The authors have no relevant financial disclosures.
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts