ABSTRACT
OBJECT: More than 75% of women have been reported to experience premenstrual symptoms and three to eight percent of them suffer from premenstrual dysphoric disorder(PMDD). But little is known about prevalence of premenstrual syndrome(PMS) and PMDD among Korean women. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence of PMDD and PMS in Korean women who attended universities at the time of survey. METHODS: One thousand four hundred and nineteen subjects were randomly selected with cluster sampling method among four women's university in Seoul. We measured the severity of premenstrual symptoms using six-point rating scale developed by the authors on the basis of the research criteria for PMDD in DSM-IV. Premenstrual worsening of symptoms was defined as increase in symptom scores of more than 75% from follicular to luteal phase score. And also, we compared characteristic symptoms, eating behaviors, and functional impairments between PMS and PMDD. RESULT: After excluding inadequate data according to our exclusion criteria, 873 of 1419 subjects(61.5%) were included in the estimation of the prevalence of PMS and PMDD. Each prevalence rate of PMS and PMDD was found to be 83.3% and 5.0% on the basis of 75% change method respectively. The most frequent symptom was physical symptoms such as headache or breast tenderness(56.4%) in PMS and 'felt irritable'(95.5%) in PMDD. Of the 44 subjects with PMDD, 39(88.6%) reported to have experienced the impairment in work or school at least once per month because of premenstrual symptoms. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that prevalence and symptoms of PMDD in Korean university women are similar to those in western culture. The finding that mood symptoms were more frequent and severe in PMDD than in PMS implies that the former may be a disordered condition to be distinguished from the latter physiologic one.