Carneiro C, et al. – This cross–sectional study aimed to evaluate the prevalence of fatigue in psoriatic arthritis patients and to correlate it to the quality of life indexes, functional capacity, anxiety, depression and disease activity. It was observed in the findings that the prevalence of fatigue was moderate to intense in <25% of patients with psoriatic arthritis. Fatigue appears to be more related to the emotional and social aspects of the disease than to joint inflammatory aspects, confirming that the disease’s visibility is the most disturbing aspect for the patient and that “skin pain” is more intense than the joint pain.

Methods

• This research was performed on outpatients with psoriatic arthritis.
• Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy – Fatigue (FACIT-F; version 4) was utilized to measure fatigue; 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36) and Psoriasis Disability Index (PDI) to measure quality of life; Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) to assess functional capacity; Hospital Anxiety and Depression (HAD) scale to measure anxiety and depression symptoms; Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Disease Activity Index (BASDAI) and Clinical Disease Activity Index (CDAI) to assess clinical activity.

Results

• One hundred one patients with mean age of 50.77 years were incorporated in this study.
• Findings revealed that the mean PDI score was 8.01; PASI score, 9.88; BASDAI score, 3.59; HAQ score, 0.85; HAD – Anxiety (HAD A) score, 7.39; HAD Depression (HAD D) score, 5.93; FACIT–Fatigue Scale (FACIT-FS) score, 38.3 and CDAI score, 2.65.
• It was noted that FACIT-FS was statistically related to PASI (r_s -0.345, p<0.001), PDI (r_s -0.299, p<0.002), HAQ (r_s -0.460, p<0.001), HAD A (r_s -0.306, p=0.002) and HAD D (r_s -0.339, p<0.001).
• The connections with CDAI and BASDAI were not affirmed.
• Notably, there was statistically significant relationship with all of the domains of SF-36 and FACIT-F (version 4).