Evaluation of fatigue and its correlation with quality of life index, anxiety symptoms, depression and activity of disease in patients with psoriatic arthritis

Abstract

BackgroundPsoriatic arthritis is associated with psychosocial morbidity and decrease in quality of life. Psychiatric comorbidity also plays an important role in the impairment of quality of life and onset of fatigue.ObjectivesThis study aimed to assess the prevalence of fatigue in psoriatic arthritis patients and to correlate it to quality of life indexes, functional capacity, anxiety, depression and disease activity.Patients and methodsThis cross-sectional study was performed on outpatients with psoriatic arthritis. Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Fatigue (FACIT-F; version 4) was used to measure fatigue; 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and Psoriasis Disability Index (PDI) to measure quality of life; Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) to assess functional capacity; Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale to measure anxiety and depression symptoms; Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) and Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) to evaluate clinical activity.ResultsIn all, 101 patients with mean age of 50.77 years were included. The mean PDI score was 8.01; PASI score, 9.88; BASDAI score, 3.59; HAQ score, 0.85; HAD – Anxiety (HAD A) score, 7.39; HAD Depression (HAD D) score, 5.93; FACIT–Fatigue Scale (FACIT-FS) score, 38.3 and CDAI score, 2.65. FACIT-FS was statistically associated with PASI (rs −0.345, p<0.001), PDI (rs −0.299, p<0.002), HAQ (rs −0.460, p<0.001), HAD A (rs −0.306, p=0.002) and HAD D (rs −0.339, p<0.001). The correlations with CDAI and BASDAI were not confirmed. There was statistically significant correlation with all of the domains of SF-36 and FACIT-F (version 4).ConclusionPrevalence of fatigue was moderate to intense in <25% of patients with psoriatic arthritis. Fatigue seems to be more related to the emotional and social aspects of the disease than to joint inflammatory aspects, confirming that the disease’s visibility is the most disturbing aspect for the patient and that “skin pain” is more intense than the joint pain.

Path model of factors influencing health‐related quality of life among older people with knee osteoarthritis

“…We found a high correlation between fatigue and depressive symptoms, which was similar to a previous study (Carneiro et al, ). Because fatigue is a symptom with a multi‐dimensional impact, it is difficult to describe it explicitly.…”

“…It has a complex relationship with pain and physical activity in women with OA, and is the strongest predictor of physical activity levels in older people with knee and hip OA (Murphy et al, ; Snijders et al, ). In addition, fatigue is related to depression and poorer quality of life in people with psoriatic arthritis (Carneiro et al, ), and is associated with both clinical and psychological conditions in people with knee OA.…”

The Impact of Comorbidity on Patient-Reported Outcomes in Psoriatic Arthritis: A Systematic Literature Review

“…1). Ultimately, 66 of the 84 studies were excluded from inclusion in the systematic literature review (Table 1) [12,, and 18 articles were included [9,14,[83][84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95][96][97][98], one of which had been identified from the hand search (see Tables 2 and 3 for more detail).…”

Quality of life and patient preferences among Danish patients with ulcerative colitis – results from a survey study

“…The impact of the disease on HRQoL is comparable to other diseases. In arthritis, a number of studies have demonstrated significantly lower quality of life compared to the general population both in patients with rheumatoid arthritis [33][34][35][36][37] and in those with psoriatic arthritis [38][39][40][41] . This underlines the need for new treatment options.…”