Clinical factors associated with severely reduced health status in patients with COPD and comorbid depression/anxiety: The Swedish PRAXIS study

Patients with COPD and comorbid depression/anxiety are at risk of reduced health status. This study aimed to assess health status in COPD patients with depression/anxiety, the occurrence of severely reduced health status in this group, and to investigate associations between severely reduced health status and patient-related clinical factors. This cross-sectional study included 2245 randomly selected COPD patients from primary care and hospital outpatient clinics in Sweden. The COPD Assessment Test (CAT) and the Clinical COPD Questionnaire (CCQ) were used to assess health status. Severely reduced health status was defined as CAT ≥ 20 or CCQ ≥ 2. The 524 patients (23.3%) who reported depression/anxiety had higher mean CAT scores (18.3 vs. 15.2, p < 0.001) and CCQ scores (2.37 vs. 1.83, p < 0.001) than patients without depression/anxiety. In this group, 48% had CAT ≥ 20 and 57% had CCQ ≥ 2. In patients with depression/anxiety, factors associated with CAT ≥ 20 were: onset of COPD symptoms before 60 years of age (OR = 2.62 [95% CI 1.37–5.04]), frequent symptoms of depression in the previous three months (2.59 [1.55–4.30]), one or more COPD exacerbations in the previous six months (2.37 [1.41–4.00]) and physical inactivity (1.89 [1.11–3.22]). Apart from physical inactivity, factors associated with CCQ ≥ 2 were the same as for CAT ≥ 20. Approximately half of the COPD patients with comorbid depression/anxiety reported severely reduced health status. Exacerbations, frequent depressive symptoms and physical inactivity were factors associated with severely reduced health status, and constitute important treatable and preventable traits of COPD.