Knee osteoarthritis leads to poorer overall quality of life in adults

In their comparison of 112 adult patients with knee osteoarthritis to a group of 40 healthy subjects who were matched for age and gender, researchers from Turkey found significantly poorer quality of life among the arthritis cohort.

In addition to using the generic SF-36 instrument to assess quality of life in the patients with osteoarthritis (OA), the researchers assessed how these patients were affected by OA and any disability and pain they had using the WOMAC index, Lequesne index and a Visual Analog Scale (VAS).

Researchers assessed the control group’s quality of life using only the SF-36 instrument.

The results showed all of the SF-36 subgroup scores were lower for the group with OA than the controls.

"We found that SF-36 and WOMAC pain scores were more severe in female patients," Berat Meryem Alkan, MD, and colleagues wrote in their abstract.

Furthermore, Alkan and colleagues found a statistically significant correlation between the physical function and pain areas of the SF-36 in the patients with OA and other measures such as VAS pain, effusion, and the subgroup scores of both the Lequesne and WOMAC instruments.

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Source:

Alkan BM. Modern Rheumatology. 2013; doi:10.1007/s10165-013-0844-9.