Prevalence of self reported musculoskeletal diseases is high.
OBJECTIVE
To present the prevalence of self reported musculoskeletal diseases, the coexistence of these diseases, the test-retest reliability with six months in between, and the association with musculoskeletal pain symptoms.


METHODS
Twelve layman descriptions of common musculoskeletal diseases were part of the questionnaires of a prospective cohort study of a random sample in the general Dutch population aged 25 years or more (baseline: n=3664, follow up after six months: n=2338). Data collection also included information about pain relating to five different anatomical areas.


RESULTS
Osteoarthritis of the knee (men 10.1%, women 13.6%) was amongst the most reported musculoskeletal diseases, whereas the figures for self reported rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were 1.6% and 4.6% for men and women, respectively. The coexistence of these diseases is high: 47 of the 66 combinations were reported more often than would be expected if they were independent of each other (p<0.05). For most diseases the test-retest reliability was good (kappa between 0.6 and 0.8), but for repetitive strain injury (kappa=0.37) and chronic arthritis other than RA (kappa=0.44) the agreement was fair to moderate. All complaints of pain were more often reported by those with musculoskeletal diseases than those without those diseases, and the pain pattern was disease-specific.


CONCLUSIONS
Self reported musculoskeletal diseases are highly prevalent, with a fair to good reliability and a disease-specific pain pattern. Health surveys are a limited but valuable source of information for this group of health problems, which is not available from most other sources of information.
Picavet
H S J
HS
National Institute of Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands. Academic Hospital Rotterdam, The Netherlands. susan.picavet@rivm.nl
Hazes
J M W
JM
D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001172:Arthritis, Rheumatoid / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005356:Fibromyalgia / Q000453:epidemiology; D006073:Gout / Q000453:epidemiology; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009140:Musculoskeletal Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology*; D019838:Neck Injuries / Q000453:epidemiology; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D015207:Osteoarthritis, Hip / Q000453:epidemiology; D020370:Osteoarthritis, Knee / Q000453:epidemiology; D010024:Osteoporosis / Q000453:epidemiology; D015995:Prevalence; D011446:Prospective Studies; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D017678:Sex Distribution; D052256:Tendinopathy / Q000453:epidemiology; D013997:Time Factors