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Observational Study
. 2016 Jan 22;11(1):e0146688.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0146688. eCollection 2016.

Comparison of the Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment and Health Assessment Questionnaires as Tools to Predict the Need for Support Measures in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Xavier Janssens  1 , Saskia Decuman  1   2 , Filip De Keyser  1 ; Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment study group
Collaborators, Affiliations
Observational Study

Comparison of the Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment and Health Assessment Questionnaires as Tools to Predict the Need for Support Measures in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Xavier Janssens et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Objective: Scores on the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) predict the need for support measures in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). In this study we compare the performance of the HAQ in this context with that of the more disease-specific Belgian Rheumatoid Arthritis Disability Assessment (BRADA) questionnaire.

Methods: In this multicenter observational study, patients with RA and disease duration of at least one year who consulted their rheumatologist for a routine follow-up visit filled out the HAQ, and BRADA questionnaires. The performance of HAQ and BRADA to predict the need for support measures available to patients with RA was evaluated using Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves, with the expert opinion of the rheumatologist as a reference.

Results: The study analyzed data of 301 patients with RA (70.8% females) with mean age 59.8 ± 12.8, disease duration 11.4 ± 9.3 years, and DAS28 values of 2.84 ± 1.18. HAQ scores averaged 0.97 ± 0.73 and BRADA scores were 3.92 ± 3.49 over the last week and 3.89 ± 3.50 over the last 3 months. The area under the ROC curves for the BRADA scores for the support measures investigated ranged from 0.702 to 0.862 and did not differ significantly from those of the HAQ (range 0.725-0.860).

Conclusion: The disease-specific BRADA questionnaire is equivalent to the HAQ in predicting the need for support measures in patients with stable RA.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: F. De Keyser received research support from Roche, UCB, Actelion; served as consultant for MSD/Schering Plough, Abbott, UCB, Roche, GSK. Funding from Roche was received for this specific study. X. Janssens and S. Decuman declare that they have no conflicts of interest. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. ROC curves comparing BRADA and HAQ as predictors for the need of support measures in patients with RA.
Rheumatologists evaluated their patients’ need for each of the nine support measures currently available in Belgium. Receiver Operator Characteristics Curves (ROC) comparing the performance of the BRADA questionnaire scores with the HAQ in predicting the need for support measures, taking the positive recommendation of the rheumatologist as a reference. These ROCs show that BRADA and HAQ perform comparably well for all support measures evaluated.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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