Changes in clinical, physical, and psychological functioning before and after the COVID-19 pandemic in biologic-treated rheumatoid arthritis patients

Objective: Crisis situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic can have a negative impact on people’s physical and mental health. We aimed to determine changes in clinical, physical, and psychological functioning before and after the pandemic in biologictreated Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients.

Methods: We included 103 RA patients (81.6% females; mean age 56.1±13.8 years). Patients completed the General Anxiety Disorder Scale, the Patient Health Questionnaire, the 36-item Short Form Health Survey, the Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory, and the Visual Analogue Scale-pain. Paired sample t-tests were used to analyze the data.

Results: Our results showed significantly worsened pain, and higher anxiety levels post-pandemic. In contrast, social functioning and mental component summary improved compared to pre-pandemic. Our analysis did not show any significant differences between pre-and post-pandemic outcomes in depression, physical component summary, general, physical or mental fatigue, and clinical variables.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the pandemic may have had a negative impact on patients with RA, as they were found to experience higher levels of pain and anxiety. In addition to their biological treatment patients may benefit from nonpharmacological interventions focused on prevalent problems, such as eHealth applications that were widely used during the pandemic.