Impact of fatigue on health‐related quality of life in rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract Objective To multidimensionally assess fatigue in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and to evaluate the impact of fatigue on health‐related quality of life (HRQOL). Methods The study was conducted in 1999 among 490 RA patients with varying disease duration. Fatigue was measured with the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI‐20) and HRQOL with a validated Dutch version of the RAND 36‐Item Health Survey. We evaluated the impact of fatigue on HRQOL by multiple linear regression analyses taking into account RA‐related pain and depressive symptoms. Results Different aspects of fatigue selectively explained different dimensions of HRQOL. The MFI‐20 was entered last to the linear regression models, resulting in an additional increase of explained variance of 1% (mental health) to 14% (vitality). Conclusion The multidimensional portrayal of RA‐related fatigue can be used to develop intervention strategies targeted to specific aspects of fatigue. Fatigue, supplementary to RA‐related pain and depressive symptoms, appears to be a feasible and treatable target in the clinical management of RA to increase HRQOL.