Quality of life among patients with systemic lupus erythematosus in Karbala Governorate

Background: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease with a variety of clinical symptoms that primarily affect women of childbearing age causing a significant patient burden. Objectives: To assess health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among patients with SLE and to evaluate its association with different sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of SLE patients. Patients and methods: Seventy five patients with SLE who attended the rheumatology outpatient clinics of Imam Al-Hassan Al-Mujtaba Teaching Hospital, were enrolled in a cross-sectional study. Lupus quality of life (LupusQoL) was used to assess disease-specific health related quality of life; and SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) was applied to evaluate disease activity. Results: The mean age of the studied patients was 38.12±11.70 years and were 97.3% female. All LupusQoL domains were reduced. Intimate relationship accounted for the highest QoL score with a median of 50, and IQR of 25-100, whereas fatigue represented the lowest score with a median of 25, and IQR of 6.2-50. LupusQoL was positively correlated to address, education, disease duration, occupation, and impact on job especially in physical health domain with r equal (0.277, 0.342, 0.137, 0.240, 0.314respectively). LupusQol was negatively correlated with age (r= -0.461), and with disease activity (r= -0.292), with p- values of all were >0.05. Renal and neuropsychiatric involvement of the disease did not statistically correlate with HRQOL. Conclusion: patients with SLE had low scores of all LupusQoL domains. There was significant positive correlation between LupusQoL domains and address, education, disease duration, occupation, and impact on job and significant negative correlation with age, and disease activity. Key words: SLE, health related quality of life, LupusQoL