Anxiety Impacts Rheumatoid Arthritis Symptoms And Health-Related Quality Of Life Even At Low Levels

Researchers investigated how health-related quality of life (HRQL) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) could be impacted by symptoms of anxiety and depression. This analysis involved adults with RA engaging in an observational cohort. There were 196 RA participants; among those, mild anxiety, moderate-severe anxiety, mild depression, and moderate-severe depression symptoms were present in 18%, 9%, 18%, and in 14%, respectively. Anxiety and depression scores were found to be related to significantly worse mean scores across HRQL domains. In multivariable linear regression, higher anxiety levels were shown to be predicted by depression, physical function (PF) and fatigue, whereas higher depression levels were predicted by only anxiety. In subset analysis, higher anxiety levels were no longer predicted by PF. Overall, findings revealed that RA patients commonly experienced emotional distress, even when disease was well controlled. There were considerable effects of emotional distress, even at mild levels, on other aspects of HRQL.

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