Performance of the revised 2016 fibromyalgia diagnostic criteria in Korean patients with fibromyalgia

Aim: Recently, the revised 2016 version of the 2010/2011 fibromyalgia (FM) criteria was released. No study has yet assessed whether the 2016 criteria perform better than the previous criteria. Therefore, we validated a Korean version of the revised FM criteria and explored whether they were better than the previous criteria in terms of diagnostic accuracy.

Methods: We enrolled 86 FM patients and 89 patients with various rheumatological disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, osteoarthritis, and myofascial pain syndrome. All patients were invited to complete a questionnaire that included the revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQ), the EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire (EQ-5D), and the Multidimensional Health Assessment Questionnaire (MD-HAQ).

Results: The test-retest reliability of the revised criteria was assessed in 30 patients after 2 weeks; the Spearman coefficient ranged from 0.616 to 0.910 and the Cronbach's alpha was 0.942 (95% CI: 0.930-0.964). The revised criteria correlated significantly with the revised FIQ score (P < .001), the EQ-5D score (P < .001), and the MD-HAQ score (P < .001). Using the revised criteria, FM was diagnosed in 94.2% of patients with a prior diagnosis of FM, and in 10.1% of those with other rheumatological disorders. The sensitivity and specificity of the revised criteria were 93.1% and 90.7%, respectively. The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of the revised criteria was 0.966, higher than those of the 1990, 2010, and 2011 criteria.

Conclusion: The revised criteria are reliable and valid when used to diagnose patients with FM, and are better than the previous criteria.