Original articleHealth-related quality of life in psoriatic arthritis patients in SpainCalidad de vida relacionada con la salud de pacientes con artritis psoriásica en España
Section snippets
Study design
A cross-sectional, observational, multi-centre study was conducted involving 18 centres in Spain. Information on patient clinical characteristics and HRQL was collected by a dermatologist and rheumatologist working together in each centre. The study was approved by the Clinical Research Ethics Committee for all of the participating centres, and informed consent was signed by all of the subjects in the study. The recruitment period was from January to March 2007.
The patient inclusion criteria
Characteristics of the patients with psoriatic arthritis
The study included 287 patients with psoriatic arthritis, with 71 (24.7%) patients receiving infliximab. The patient demographics are shown in Table 1. The mean (±SD) age was 52.4 (±12.5) years, and the mean weight was 76.5 (±15.1) kg. Additionally, 56% of the patients were male. Of the 287 patients, 16 (6%) lived alone. No significant differences were found in the demographic characteristics between the patients receiving or not receiving infliximab.
No significant differences were found between
Discussion
To our knowledge, our study is the first one performed in Spain to measure HRQL only in psoriatic arthritis. Other publications23, 24 included a mixed psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis population and did not categorise the results by disease.
The most important impairment observed in the study was related to work and daily activities. The main problem communicated by the patients was the impairment that arthropathy causes on normal daily living. Patients sometimes feel unable to perform some
Protection of human and animal subjects
The authors declare that the procedures followed were in accordance with the regulations of the responsible Clinical Research Ethics Committee and in accordance with those of the World Medical Association and the Helsinki Declaration.
Confidentiality of data
The authors declare that they have followed the protocols of their work centre on the publication of patient data and that all the patients included in the study have received sufficient information and have given their informed consent in writing to participate in
Funding
This study received an unconditional grant from Schering-Plough. The authors had independence from the funding body with respect to study design, analysis and interpretation of the data, report writing, and submission of the manuscript for publication.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Eliazar Sabater and Covadonga Torres of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research Iberia (PORIB) for their assistance with the statistical analysis and manuscript writing.
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