Prevention of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders

Editorial Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) constitute a major component of occupational diseases (ODs), accounting for approximately 38.1% of all ODs in Europe [1] and approximately 70% of all compensated ODs in Korea [2]. According to a recent European Union report, WMSDs tend to be underreported and are tending to increase among women, young, and migrant workers. The costs for upper extremity WMSDs alone rage from 0.5 to 3.8% of gross national product [3]. In the United States, costs for compensation, wage loss, and production loss range from 45–54 billion US dollors [4]. Research to prevent these highly costly WMSDs is being conducted in various fields including epidemiology, physiology, ergonomics, biomechanics, molegular biology, and genetics and to tackle such issues as return to work, rehabilitation, policy and compensation. One of the most important avenues of communication for these research efforts is the Intenational Conference on Prevention of Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders (PREMUS). There are 35 active scientific committees in the International Commission on Occupational Health, and the Musculoskeletal Disorder Committee has held an international conference every 3 years under the name of PREMUS. The most recent PREMUS conference was held in Busan, Korea on July 7–11, 2013. It was the first time that PREMUS was organized outside of North America or Europe. Attending pariticipants were 290 scholars from 30 conutries all over the world, including 11 Asian countries. Among the many papers presented at the conference, 10 describing the spectrum of WMSDs research around world were chosen to public in AOEM. The study by Nur Azmar et al. shows the prevalence and psychosocial risk factors for WMSDs among Malaysian