Health-related quality of life, employment and disability in patients with Sjögren's syndrome

Abstract

SS has a large impact on HR-QOL, employment and disability.

Sjögren Syndrome and Work Disability

“…In broad terms the findings of increased work disability in pSS are in keeping with the small number of previous studies 3,4,5 . One clear and consistent message from all of these studies, conducted on different populations, with different experimental designs and different comparators, showed that work disability, including sick leave and disability pension, is significantly higher among patients with pSS than in the general population.…”

“…One clear and consistent message from all of these studies, conducted on different populations, with different experimental designs and different comparators, showed that work disability, including sick leave and disability pension, is significantly higher among patients with pSS than in the general population. Mandl, et al also demonstrate that work disability in pSS is not associated with systemic disease activity (measured with the ESSDAI), and this is also consistent with previously published studies 3,4,5 .…”

“…This is of particular importance as we move into an era of clinical trials for (expensive) biologic agents for pSS manifestations. There are a limited number of published papers about the effect of developing pSS on patients' employment and ability to work and what aspects of the disease may predict work disability 3,4,5 . In this issue of The Journal, Mandl, et al report the results of their study of work disability in newly diagnosed patients with pSS in Skåne County in Sweden 6 .…”

The Potential Role for Early Biomarker Testing as Part of a Modern, Multidisciplinary Approach to Sjögren’s Syndrome Diagnosis

“…Due to the range of medical complications associated with SS, it is not surprising that the disease is associated with significant impairments in quality of life [23][24][25][26][27] and functioning [25,28]. Patients with SS also have a high rate of depression [26].…”

Safety of treatments for primary Sjögren’s syndrome

“…[1] pSS is a disabling disease and has a large effect on health-related quality of life. [2] Besides symptomatic treatments that improve dryness, no effective treatments have yet been approved for use in pSS. However, treatment with biologic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) has shown promising outcomes.…”