Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2004 Aug 15;51(4):578-85.
doi: 10.1002/art.20539.

Impact of fatigue on health-related quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis

Ines Rupp  1 , Hendriek C Boshuizen, Catharina E Jacobi, Huibert J Dinant, Geertrudis A M van den Bos
Affiliations

Impact of fatigue on health-related quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis

Ines Rupp et al. Arthritis Rheum. .

Abstract

Objective: To multidimensionally assess fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to evaluate the impact of fatigue on health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

Methods: The study was conducted in 1999 among 490 RA patients with varying disease duration. Fatigue was measured with the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20) and HRQOL with a validated Dutch version of the RAND 36-Item Health Survey. We evaluated the impact of fatigue on HRQOL by multiple linear regression analyses taking into account RA-related pain and depressive symptoms.

Results: Different aspects of fatigue selectively explained different dimensions of HRQOL. The MFI-20 was entered last to the linear regression models, resulting in an additional increase of explained variance of 1% (mental health) to 14% (vitality).

Conclusion: The multidimensional portrayal of RA-related fatigue can be used to develop intervention strategies targeted to specific aspects of fatigue. Fatigue, supplementary to RA-related pain and depressive symptoms, appears to be a feasible and treatable target in the clinical management of RA to increase HRQOL.

PubMed Disclaimer

LinkOut - more resources