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
. 2011 Jul;16(7):897-903.

Health-related quality of life and disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis

Gholam Hossein Alishiri  1 , Noushin Bayat, Ahmad Salimzadeh, Amirhossein Salari, Seyed Morteza Hosseini, Shadi Rahimzadeh, Shervin Assari
Affiliations

Health-related quality of life and disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis

Gholam Hossein Alishiri et al. J Res Med Sci. 2011 Jul.

Abstract

Background: The present study sought to 1) investigate the degrees of correlations between different disease activity scores (DASs) and health-related quality of life (HRQoL), and 2) determine if DASs correlate with either physical or mental HRQoL.

Methods: Eighty patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were assessed for different DASs, measured with erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) or C-reactive protein (CRP), namely DAS4-ESR, DAS-3 ESR, DAS4-CRP, DAS3-CRP, DAS4-28 ESR, DAS3-28 ESR, DAS4-28 CRP, and DAS3-28 CRP, and Simplified Disease Activity Indexes namely SDAI-ESR, and SDAI-CRP. Physical and mental HRQoL were measured using the SF-36. The Pearson correlation test was employed to examine the correlations between HRQoL and different DAS indices. PASS 2000 (Power Analysis and Sample Size) software was utilized to find significant differences between the correlations.

Results: SF-36 total score showed a significant inverse correlation with the DAS4-ESR, DAS-3 ESR, DAS4-CRP, DAS3-CRP, DAS4-28 ESR, DAS3-28 ESR, DAS4-28 CRP, and DAS3-28 CRP, with correlation coefficients of -0.320, -0.314, -0.330, -0.323, -0.327, -0.318, -0.360 and -0.348, respectively (P < 0.01 for all). The correlation coefficients between different DAS indices and the HRQoL score were not significantly different. In addition, all DASs showed significant correlations with physical HRQoL, but not with mental HRQoL.

Conclusions: Among patients with RA, disease severity indices are associated with physical, but not mental HRQoL. However this study failed to show any differences between various DASs in their clinical use.

Keywords: Disease Activity Score; Health-Related Quality of Life; Rheumatoid Arthritis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of Interests Authors have no conflict of interests.

References

    1. Arvidson NG. Disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis: studies on interleukin-6, tumour necrosis factor alpha, monocyte activity, acute phase markers, glucocorticoids, and disability. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis; 2003. pp. 1248–88.
    1. Rintelen B, Sautner J, Haindl PM, Andel I, Maktari A, Leeb BF. Comparison of three rheumatoid arthritis disease activity scores in clinical routine. Scand J Rheumatol. 2009;38(5):336–41. - PubMed
    1. Salaffi F, Cimmino MA, Leardini G, Gasparini S, Grassi W. Disease activity assessment of rheumatoid arthritis in daily practice: validity, internal consistency, reliability and congruency of the Disease Activity Score including 28 joints (DAS28) compared with the Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) Clin Exp Rheumatol. 2009;27(4):552–9. - PubMed
    1. Castrejon I, Ortiz AM, Toledano E, Castaneda S, Garcia-Vadillo A, Patino E, et al. Estimated cutoff points for the 28-joint disease activity score based on C-reactive protein in a longitudinal register of early arthritis. J Rheumatol. 2010;37(7):1439–43. - PubMed
    1. Pincus T, Yazici Y, Bergman MJ. RAPID3, an index to assess and monitor patients with rheumatoid arthritis, without formal joint counts: similar results to DAS28 and CDAI in clinical trials and clinical care. Rheum Dis Clin North Am. 2009;35(4):773–8. viii. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources