Depression and quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis individuals and stable health individuals: a comparative study

Abstract

The objective of this study was to verify the depression occurrence and changes in quality of life (QoL) in individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Sixty individuals took part of the study, who were divided into 2 groups with 30 participants each. The Test Group had RA patients, and the Control Group had stable health individuals. QoL was assessed by the Medical Outcomes Study 36-Item Short-Form Healthy Survey (SF-36) and depression was evaluated by means of the Beck Depression Scale (BDS). In order to make comparisons between the groups regarding the scores of each SF-36 domain, we used the Mann-Whitney test and for the "general health" data of the SF-36, the χ² test was applied. In order to compare the groups regarding the total score of depression and scores of each category of depression, the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney (WMW) and χ² testswere used, respectively. For the general "health state" variables of the SF-36 and classification of depression, we calculated the crude and adjusted Odds Ratio through logistic regression modeling. The significance level was set at 5%. The results showed that there were differences among the groups for the eight SF-36 domains, indicating that individuals with RA present lower rate of QoL and self-evaluation in health (adjusted OR=14.38) and that 63.33% of the participants with RA present some degree of depression. We concluded that RA causes a negative impact in the QoL and the depression can be considered a symptom associated to the decrease of the functional capacity due to the disease.