Association of Quality of Life and Disease Activity in Female Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease that affects every aspects of quality of life and varies with disease severity especially among females. Objective: To assess quality of life (QOL) in female rheumatoid arthritis patients and its relationship with disease activity. Methods: It was a cross sectional analytical study with 140 rheumatoid arthritis female patients recruited through convenient sampling from October 2018 to January 2019 from the Rheumatology out-patient department of Shaikh Zayed Hospital, Lahore. World Health Organization Quality of Life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) was used to assess quality of life and Disease Activity Score (DAS - 28) to assess activity of disease. Data was entered and analyzed by using SPSS version 20.0. Mean +/- Standard Deviation (SD), median, frequency and percentages were used to describe various variables. The effect of sociodemographic and disease factors on four health domains of WHOQOL-BREF scores was examined by using multiple linear regression models with backward removal method. P-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: All patients were female with an average age of 36.4 +/- 5.4 years, 21.4% were obese, mostly unemployed. The DAS-28 was 2.9 +/- 0.7, with 39.3% of the patients in remission phase. On the 0 - 100 scale WHOQOL-BREF physical score was minimum, social and environmental scores have the highest median value. Education, being married and being employed had a positive effect on various scores while high DAS had a negative effect on all scores. Conclusion: Physical health domain of WHOQOL-BREF is most affected in Pakistani female rheumatoid arthritis patients. Increasing activity of disease worsens the QOL. Education, marital status, and employment has a positive effect on QOL.