Article Text
Abstract
Aims To determine whether the proportion of time systemic lupus erythematosus patients achieve remission/low disease activity state (LDAS) is associated with a better quality of life (QoL).
Patients and methods Patients from a well-established multiethnic, multicentre US cohort were included: remission: Systemic Lupus Activity Measure (SLAM) score=0, prednisone≤5 mg/day and no immunosuppressants); LDAS not in remission, SLAM score≤3, prednisone≤7.5 mg/day, no immunosuppressants; the combined proportion of time patients were in these states was the independent variable. The endpoints were the Physical and Mental Components Summary measures (PCS and MCS, respectively) and the individual subscales of the Short Form (SF)-36 at the last visit. Linear regression was used to estimate the association between the proportion of follow-up time in remission/LDAS and the SF-36 measures with and without adjustment for possible confounders.
Results Four hundred and eighty-three patients were included. The per cent of time on remission/LDAS was associated with better QoL after adjusting for potential confounders; for the PCS the parameter estimate was 9.47 (p<0.0001), for the MCS 5.89 (p=0.0027), and for the subscales they ranged between 7.51 (p=0.0495) for mental health and 31.79 (p<0.0001) for role physical.
Conclusions The per cent of time lupus patients stay on remission/LDAS is associated with a better QoL as measured by SF-36.
- systemic lupus erythematosus
- outcomes research
- disease activity
This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
Statistics from Altmetric.com
Footnotes
Contributors All authors were involved in drafting or critically revising this manuscript for important intellectual content, and all authors approved the final version to be published. GM has full access to all the study’s data and takes responsibility for their integrity and the accuracy of the analyses performed.
Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Competing interests None declared.
Patient consent for publication Not required.
Ethics approval The study was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of US academic institutions in Alabama, Texas and Puerto Rico.
Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
Data sharing statement Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available.