OBJECTIVES: To assess the estimated prevalence of possible Fibromyalgia (FM) sufferers among the general adults population in Italy using the LFES-SQ, a screening questionnaire developed by White. METHODS: This questionnaire was administrated to a random community sample of 1000 persons interviewed by telephone and positive responders to the screening questionnaire were classified as “pain sufferers”. Using a ratio calculated in Portugal between patients “positive" (+) to the screening questionnaire and the number of patients really diagnosed with FMS, we applied this ratio to our population of “pain sufferers” and therefore obtain an estimate of the prevalence of possible fibromyalgia sufferers in Italy, please note that we worked on two different populations. The ratio was calculated using a sample of patients in Lisboa, to whom we administrated the same screening questionnaire and we diagnosed this entire sample to see if they were FMS sufferers (using the 1990 ACR criteria). RESULTS: In Portugal following the hospital survey we were able to calculate the following ratios: Multiplication factors of possible FMS patients VS number of (+) = Total FM cases in Lisboa / Number of Patients screened (+), i.e . multiplication factor for the total population= 51/154= 0,331; multiplication factor for women= 50/136= 0,368; multiplication factor for men= 1/18= 0,056. Once those ratio were applied to our random sample of 1000 persons we obtained an estimated prevalence of FMS in Italy of 4.17% of the total population, 6.99% of women and 0.31% of men. CONCLUSION: Those data are higher than those obtained in the White study or in the published prevalence of FMS in the literature, but they allow us to assess an estimated prevalence of FMS. The next steps will be to calculate local multiplication factors of FMS in Italy in order to improve those estimates and to generalise this survey in Europe.