Why carry out this study?

Available studies indicate the prevalence of fibromyalgia in Mainland China ranges from 0.03% to 0.12%, much lower than that of other countries in the world. The reason(s) for such low prevalence are largely unknown and need to be explored

Different clinical manifestations of fibromyalgia in Chinese populations might be one of the reasons for this low rate and need to be investigated

The clinical features and severity of fibromyalgia in Chinese patients are not clear because few studies have been conducted

What was learned from the study?

The study found that (1) Chinese patients have similar clinical characteristics of fibromyalgia as those of patients from other countries. (2) Chinese patients’ symptoms are likely to be less severe and their quality of life might be less impacted by having fibromyalgia. The latter might contribute to the low fibromyalgia prevalence found in China if using current diagnostic methods

In addition to this discovery, further study to validate these findings and to investigate the factors that lessen the symptom severity in Chinese patients might shed some light on developing new interventions to manage this disease