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The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life

Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune illness that manifests mostly as chronic, symmetric, and progressive polyarthritis with a global frequency of 0.3–1.0%. RA is a disease that affects people all over the world. In India, the prevalence is estimated to be 0.7%, with around...

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Autores principales: Dar, Waseem R., Mir, Irfan A., Siddiq, Summra, Nadeem, Mir, Singh, Gurmeet
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9332162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35892448
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/clinpract12040062
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author Dar, Waseem R.
Mir, Irfan A.
Siddiq, Summra
Nadeem, Mir
Singh, Gurmeet
author_facet Dar, Waseem R.
Mir, Irfan A.
Siddiq, Summra
Nadeem, Mir
Singh, Gurmeet
author_sort Dar, Waseem R.
collection PubMed
description Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune illness that manifests mostly as chronic, symmetric, and progressive polyarthritis with a global frequency of 0.3–1.0%. RA is a disease that affects people all over the world. In India, the prevalence is estimated to be 0.7%, with around 10 million persons suffering from RA. Most people with rheumatoid arthritis experience fatigue on most days, with over 70% experiencing symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Patients rate fatigue as a top priority and believe this unmanageable symptom is ignored by clinicians; a systematic review shows the biological agents for RA inflammation have only a small effect on fatigue. Fatigue predicts and reduces the quality of life, and it is as difficult to cope with as pain. Physicians have traditionally concentrated on the inflammatory aspects of the illness (e.g., synovitis), whereas RA patients have prioritized pain, exhaustion, sleep difficulties, and other quality-of-life issues. Aims and Objectives: The basic aim of the study was to access the incidence of fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis and evaluate its impact on the quality of life in these patients using the MAF scale (multidimensional assessment of fatigue) after prior permission for the first time in an Asian population. Results: A total of 140 subjects and 100 controls were included in the study. Age was closely matched between the study subjects and controls. Among study subjects with the disease, 94 (67%) had a disease duration ≤ 5 years, 26 (19%) had a disease duration between 6–10 years, 10 (7%) had a duration of 11–15 years and 10 (7%) had >10 years disease duration. Among the sample, 31 (25%) study subjects had a DAS score ≤ 4.0, 63 (50%) study subjects had a DAS score (disease activity score) between 4.01 and 6.0, and in the remaining 31 (25%) study subjects, the DAS score was >6.0. The mean DAS score among study subjects was 4.96, and the study subjects had a mean activity of daily living (ADL) score of 11.64; controls had a mean score of 2.42 with a statistically significant p-value. The global fatigue index was higher in study subjects, with a mean of 33.16 in contrast with a mean of 14.41 in the controls with a significant p-value. Conclusion: Our study fatigue was a persistent problem, despite treatment. The median level of fatigue experienced by study subjects with RA was high. Therefore, as persistent fatigue is associated with functional loss, fatigue in RA remains an ‘unmet need’ and continues to be ignored by clinicians.
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spelling pubmed-93321622022-07-29 The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life Dar, Waseem R. Mir, Irfan A. Siddiq, Summra Nadeem, Mir Singh, Gurmeet Clin Pract Article Introduction: Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune illness that manifests mostly as chronic, symmetric, and progressive polyarthritis with a global frequency of 0.3–1.0%. RA is a disease that affects people all over the world. In India, the prevalence is estimated to be 0.7%, with around 10 million persons suffering from RA. Most people with rheumatoid arthritis experience fatigue on most days, with over 70% experiencing symptoms similar to chronic fatigue syndrome. Patients rate fatigue as a top priority and believe this unmanageable symptom is ignored by clinicians; a systematic review shows the biological agents for RA inflammation have only a small effect on fatigue. Fatigue predicts and reduces the quality of life, and it is as difficult to cope with as pain. Physicians have traditionally concentrated on the inflammatory aspects of the illness (e.g., synovitis), whereas RA patients have prioritized pain, exhaustion, sleep difficulties, and other quality-of-life issues. Aims and Objectives: The basic aim of the study was to access the incidence of fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis and evaluate its impact on the quality of life in these patients using the MAF scale (multidimensional assessment of fatigue) after prior permission for the first time in an Asian population. Results: A total of 140 subjects and 100 controls were included in the study. Age was closely matched between the study subjects and controls. Among study subjects with the disease, 94 (67%) had a disease duration ≤ 5 years, 26 (19%) had a disease duration between 6–10 years, 10 (7%) had a duration of 11–15 years and 10 (7%) had >10 years disease duration. Among the sample, 31 (25%) study subjects had a DAS score ≤ 4.0, 63 (50%) study subjects had a DAS score (disease activity score) between 4.01 and 6.0, and in the remaining 31 (25%) study subjects, the DAS score was >6.0. The mean DAS score among study subjects was 4.96, and the study subjects had a mean activity of daily living (ADL) score of 11.64; controls had a mean score of 2.42 with a statistically significant p-value. The global fatigue index was higher in study subjects, with a mean of 33.16 in contrast with a mean of 14.41 in the controls with a significant p-value. Conclusion: Our study fatigue was a persistent problem, despite treatment. The median level of fatigue experienced by study subjects with RA was high. Therefore, as persistent fatigue is associated with functional loss, fatigue in RA remains an ‘unmet need’ and continues to be ignored by clinicians. MDPI 2022-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC9332162/ /pubmed/35892448 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/clinpract12040062 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dar, Waseem R.
Mir, Irfan A.
Siddiq, Summra
Nadeem, Mir
Singh, Gurmeet
The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title_full The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title_fullStr The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title_full_unstemmed The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title_short The Assessment of Fatigue in Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients and Its Impact on Their Quality of Life
title_sort assessment of fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis patients and its impact on their quality of life
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9332162/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35892448
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/clinpract12040062
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