Abstract
This study explored the prevalence of fibromyalgia, the relationship of anxiety and depression with two major symptoms (pain and fatigue), and the role of co-morbidity. Participants were recruited from the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (The HUNT Study) in Norway (N = 92,936). They were females given the diagnosis of fibromyalgia by their doctor (N = 1,816), divided into one sample without (N = 977) and another with (N = 839) co-morbidity. Owing to colinearity between anxiety and depression, extreme groups were defined according to high vs. low anxiety and depression scores. About four-fifths of the initial sample were excluded by this approach, which permitted a two x two factorial split-plot ANCOVA for the assessment of the relations of anxiety and depression with pain and fatigue. The overall prevalence was 3.2%, which obscured a highly biased sex difference with 5.2% for females and .9% for males. Results from the sample without co-morbidity (N = 977) supported the idea of independent partial correlations of anxiety and depression with pain and fatigue. A different trend was indicated in the co-morbidity sample (N = 839) where fatigue was only significantly associated with depression, whereas pain was associated with anxiety. The idea of widespread pain was supported consistently only in participants without co-morbidity who scored low on anxiety. Age, incident pain and depression contributed to a discriminant function reflecting the status of co-morbidity.
Published Version
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