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. 2020 Dec 14;15(1):93.
doi: 10.1186/s13011-020-00334-x.

Impact of clinical and sociodemographic factors on fatigue among patients with substance use disorder: a cohort study from Norway for the period 2016-2020

Jørn Henrik Vold  1   2 , Rolf Gjestad  3 , Christer F Aas  4   5 , Fatemeh Chalabianloo  4   5 , Svetlana Skurtveit  6   7 , Else-Marie Løberg  4   3   8 , Kjell Arne Johansson  4   5 , Lars Thore Fadnes  4   5 ; INTRO-HCV Study Group
Collaborators, Affiliations

Impact of clinical and sociodemographic factors on fatigue among patients with substance use disorder: a cohort study from Norway for the period 2016-2020

Jørn Henrik Vold et al. Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy. .

Abstract

Background: The impact of clinical and sociodemographic factors on fatigue remains unknown among patients with substance use disorders (SUD). This study aims to evaluate fatigue among patients with SUD using a nine-item fatigue severity scale (FSS-9) and identify the impact that clinical and sociodemographic factors - such as injecting substance use, chronic infectious diseases, liver fibrosis, opioid agonist therapy (OAT), debt difficulties, and housing situation - have on fatigue.

Methods: We used data from a cohort of patients with SUD in Norway with annual health assessments surveying FSS-9 and some clinical and sociodemographic factors. A total of 915 FSS-9 measurements were collected from 654 patients during the period 2016-2020. We defined baseline as the first annual health assessment when the health assessments were listed chronologically. Time was defined as years from baseline. We used a linear mixed model to analyse whether the clinical and sociodemographic factors affected the FSS-9 sum score, presented with beta coefficients (β) with 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Results: The mean sum score of the FSS-9 was 43 (standard deviation: 16) at baseline. Females compared with males (adjusted mean difference of FSS-9 sum score: 4.1, 95% CI: 1.3-7.0), having debt difficulties compared with having no debt difficulties (2.9;0.4-5.3), and frequent use of benzodiazepines (5.7;3.0-8.4) or amphetamines (-5.0;-8.0- -2.0) compared to less frequent or no use of these substances changed the FSS-9 baseline sum score. The other clinical and sociodemographic factors did not predict any clinically relevant change in the FSS-9 sum score from baseline to the following health assessments.

Conclusion: Patients with SUD suffer from high levels of fatigue. Female patients, patients with debt difficulties, and those with extensive use of benzodiazepines are at particular risk of being fatigued. This should be taken into consideration when planning health services.

Keywords: Comorbidities; Fatigue; Fatigue severity scale; HIV; Illicit drugs; Kidney disease; Quality of life; Substance-related disorders; Viral human hepatitis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Not applicable.

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