Quality of life and depression in rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic illness showing quite variations in terms of its progress and prognosis. Therefore, it is critical to evaluate patient's functional and sociopsychological losses due to rheumatoid arthritis in assessing the severity of the illness. The functional capacity and quality of life are particularly important for the patient Two patients with the same clinic would view quality of life differently. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship of clinical parameters and depression level associated with rheumatoid arthritis to quality of life. The study included SO patients with rheumatoid arthritis and SO healthy person as control group. A standard form was used to gather patients data. Data were collected from all patients about illness duration, the way it started, the first involved joint, systemic and laboratory findings, duration of morning stiffness, pain, Ritchie disjoint index, Lee functional index, functional capacity, exiting deformations, factors stimulating the illness and quality of life. The pain was measured by visual analog scale (VAS) and depression level was measured by Beck depression scale, Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) and Arthritis Impact Measurement Scales were used to measure quality of life. First, the patient and control group were compared to see if there is significant difference between the two in terms of these measures. Then, the patient data were used to examine the correlation of clinical parameters and depression level associated with rheumatoid arthritis to quality of life scores. The average age was 50.04 ±11.14 (25-73) for patient group and 48.40 ± 19.67 (22-76) for control group. Bom patient group and control group included 38 females and 12 males. There was no signişficant difference between two groups in terms of age and gender (p>0.05). The scores of Beck depression scale, HAQ, NHP for patient group were 21. 06±7.8, 1,38±0.6 and 63.42±17.0, respectively while these scores in the same order were 14.32±6.3, 0.46.0.5 and 37.58 ± 21.3. These there scores were significantly different between two groups (p=0.020, p=0.001. and p=O.00019, respectively). In patient group the depression level was significantly correlated with VAS (r=0.35, p<0.05), Lee functional index (r=0.32, p<0.05) and NHP score (r=0.63, pO.001). In conclusion, the study found significant differences between the patient and control groups in terms of depression level and NHP and HAQ scores used to measure quality of life, which indicated that the quality of life of the patients with rheumatoid arthritis was negatively influenced. In addition, the study found that depression level was positively correlated with pain, functional index and NHP. These findings suggested that the patients with rheumatoid arthritis should be examined in terms of depression and quality of life.