Nursing intervention reduces depression for patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A randomized controlled trial protocol

BACKGROUND: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a kind of chronic disease of inflammatory joint, which can lead to the damage and disability of bone and cartilage. Psychiatric comorbidity is related to the adverse results of RA. Symptoms of depression is associated with the increased disease activity and decreased response to the treatments. Therefore, the depression may be an effective intervention target to improve the life quality and subjective health of the patients with RA. The objective of this experiment is to evaluate the effectiveness of nursing intervention for reducing depression for patients with RA. METHOD: It is a single-center randomized controlled study to be conducted from January 2021 to December 2021. It was admitted via the Ethics Committee of Tianjin Medical University (202018384). One hundred patients are included in the study. The inclusion criteria contains: 1. definite diagnosis of RA; 2. aged 18 to 60 years. The exclusion criteria contains: 1. other infectious arthritis; 2. current use of oral glucocorticoids; 3. serious physical comorbidities; 4. women with the possibility of pregnancy. All the patients participating in this study are randomly divided into control group and study group, with 50 patients in each group. The primary result is the severity of depression in the patients with RA, based on the generally utilized questionnaires (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). The secondary outcome is the patients life quality, which is evaluated with the short form 36 questionnaire. The analysis of all the data are conducted with the software of IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, version 20. RESULTS: Table will show the clinical outcomes after various interventions. CONCLUSION: This paper instructs the nurses to develop protocol based on evidence to improve the clinical efficacy for the RA patients. Trial registration number: researchregistry6114.