Positive treatment response improves the health-related quality of life of patients with early rheumatoid arthritis.
OBJECTIVE
To examine treatment induced changes in health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) in patients with early rheumatoid arthritis (RA).


METHODS
Changes in HR-QoL were assessed by the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) instrument in 62 consecutive working age patients with recent onset RA with duration of symptoms of less than two years and naive with regard to disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and glucocorticoids. Treatment-response was assessed by the criteria of the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR; 28-joint score; DAS28) at 6 months.


RESULTS
NHP mean scores for pain (p=0.029) and emotional reaction (p=0.035) at baseline were related to EULAR response at 6 months, i.e. non-responders had the poorest baseline HR-QoL scores. When the patients were grouped according to EULAR response at 6 months there was a statistically significant mean linear change to better HR-QoL in NHP energy (p=0.0023), pain (p<0.001) and mobility (p=0.0085) from baseline to 6 months from the lowest to highest treatment-response level.


CONCLUSIONS
Our results show that good treatment-response as measured by the EULAR response criteria translates into improved HR-QoL dimensions for energy, pain and mobility.
Uutela
T
T
Department of Medicine, Central Hospital of Lapland, Rovaniemi, Finland. toini.uutela@fimnet.fi
Hannonen
P
P
Kautiainen
H
H
Hakala
M
M
Paananen
M-L
ML
Häkkinen
A
A