Comparison of quality of life, depression and fatigue in patients with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis

Abstract

Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is a chronic inflammatory multisystemic disease. Limitations due to skin and joint involvement of the patients; can lead to negativie suffix in emotional state, social and physical activities. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of parameters such as skin joint involvement and disease severity on factors such as fatigue, quality of life, depression, etc. in psoriasis and PsA patients. Thirty-four psoriasis and 48 PsA patients matched with each other in terms of age, sex, and other factors were included in the study. Disease severity was measured by Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI), Nail Psoriasis Severity Index (NAPSI), Disease Activity in Psoriatic Arthritis (DAPSA) and Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) scores. In order to determine the depression status, quality of life and fatigue levels of the patients, respectively; Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy - fatigue scale (FACIT) scores were used. SPSS 17 for statistical evaluation (SPSS Inc. Released 2007. SPSS for Windows, Version 17.0. Chicago, SPSS Inc.) software package was used for analyses. Written informed consent was obtained from all patients who were enrolled to the study. PsA patients were found to have worse quality of life scores than psoriasis patients who were similar in terms of age, gender and other demographic characteristics. (0.22±0.36-0-0.48±0.52 p=0.017 respectively). There was a strong correlation between DAPSA scores and HAQ scores of the cases in the PsA group (r:0 ,615 p<0.05). Likewise, disease activity measured by DAPSA was found to have moderate correlation with FACIT score, and weak but statistically significant correlation with BDI score. (r: -0.578 p<0.05 and r:0.346 p<0.001, respectively). No correlation was found between NAPSI-PASI scores and HAQ, BDI - FACIT scores in both the psoriasis and PsA groups. Both psoriasis and PsA affect the quality of life, and our findings suggest that this effect is more pronounced in PsA patients. Our study supports that; the disease severity in PsA patients is related to depression, bad quality of life and fatigue level.