Health-related quality of life in gout, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and ankylosing spondylitis, results from a cross-sectional survey in Western Sweden

Inflammatory joint diseases (IJDs) substantially affect health-related quality of life (HRQoL). We aimed to compare HRQoL between patients with gout, psoriatic arthritis (PsA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and ankylosing spondylitis (AS): (i) overall; (ii) stratified by sex; and (iii) between women and men with the same IJD diagnosis.

A survey including the RAND36-Item Health Survey for assessing HRQoL was sent to patients with a diagnosis of gout, PsA, RA, or AS, registered at a rheumatology clinic or primary care centre during 2015–2017. HRQoL was compared across IJDs. Because of age differences between diagnoses, age-matched analyses were performed.

In total, 2896/5130 (56.5%) individuals responded to the questionnaire. Of these, 868 had gout, 699 PsA, 742 RA, and 587 AS. Physical component summary (PCS) scores were more affected than mental component summary (MCS) scores for all diagnoses (PCS range: 39.7–41.2; MCS range: 43.7–48.9). Patients with gout reported better PCS scores than patients with PsA, RA, and AS, who reported similar scores in age-matched analysis. MCS scores were close to normative values for the general population and similar across IJDs. When comparing women and men with respective IJDs, women reported worse PCS (range, all IJDs: 34.5–37.4 vs 37.5–42.5) and MCS (PsA: 44.0 vs 46.8; RA: 46.1 vs 48.7) scores.

We found that patients with gout reported better PCS scores than patients with other IJDs, for whom the results were similar. Women reported overall worse PCS and MCS scores than men.